Freepik CEO: "The Day I Realized AI Would Destroy Us" — A Company That Refused To Die

Joaquín Cuenca, CEO and founder of Freepik, had built a $70M revenue company with a team of 500 people. For over a decade, Freepik focused on building the largest image library on the internet. Then DALL·E 2 arrived and overnight, everything they had built suddenly felt at risk.Instead of freezing, Freepik became one of the first major image platforms to integrate generative AI. Today, Freepik is one of the most widely used AI creative apps, according to a16z.This is exactly how they did it.Why launching AI without a clear strategy beat staying frozenThe “Humans vs AI” framework and what machines will never replicateThe hardest conversations with artists who thought their careers were overThe strategic mistake that made Adobe, Getty, and Shutterstock fall behind on AIWhy distribution is a temporary advantage, not a real moatHow building Freepik from Málaga—not Silicon Valley—became a competitive edgeGET THE BEST OF THE INTERVIEWS IN OUR NEWSLETTER🗞️Read it: https://rebrand.ly/tssnwsrssJoaquin's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joaquin-cuenca-abela-905717a/Enzo's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/enzo-cavalie/