Islamabad → San Francisco: how a three-person team got here

This month a billboard went up next to the 101 freeway in San Francisco. It said, simply: Islamabad → San Francisco. We just opened our SF office.

For us, that line is the whole story.

Where it started

ImagineArt began in Islamabad, inside NSTP, the National Science and Technology Park at H-12. Before ImagineArt, the founding team built one of the first AI background removers to run entirely on a phone's memory, and turned it into one of the most advanced AI image editors on Android.

Then we shipped ImagineArt, one of the first AI image generators on the market, back when Midjourney was still in private beta. Two years in a row, Andreessen Horowitz named our products among the top 50 GenAI apps.

Many years ago I started out as an engineer back home in Pakistan, writing code and dreaming about building something the world would actually use.

That's Ahmed Abubakar, our founder and CEO.

How it grew

There was no giant funding round. We bootstrapped ImagineArt to more than $35M in annual recurring revenue, from three people to a team of 50+.

Along the way ImagineArt grew from a single image generator into a full creative suite covering image, video, sound and voice. We trained our own models; ImagineArt 1.5 and 2.0 ranked #1 in the world for anime generation and top three for realism. And we put our tools where people already work: inside ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Grok and Manus.

Today brands like Unilever, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Bata create with ImagineArt.

Why San Francisco, and why now

Our users and enterprise customers are everywhere, and many of the most demanding are in the US. So we opened an office at 45 Belden Place, in the middle of San Francisco, to compete right where big tech lives.

Getting here took more than 3 years of all-nighters, endless coffee, and a refusal to ever give up.

Abdullah Rafique, our co-founder and CTO, wrote that the week we moved in. Zain Ul Abedien, our co-founder and CGO, added the part we'd want every candidate to hear: none of this would have happened if the Zain of 2019 had quit when his first product failed.

What it means if you join

Opening in San Francisco doesn't mean leaving Islamabad. Islamabad is still where most of the building happens. As Ahmed put it, the win "belongs to the team back home, the people who work selflessly, show up every single day, and take on every challenge thrown at them."

It does mean more doors. We're now hiring in both cities, so you can build AI products used by millions from Islamabad, or help take them to the biggest market in the world from San Francisco.

See roles in Islamabad and San Francisco.

Frequently asked questions

Where is ImagineArt headquartered?

ImagineArt is headquartered in San Francisco at 45 Belden Place. Its Islamabad office, at NSTP (National Science and Technology Park), H-12, is where most of the team builds.

Is ImagineArt a Pakistani company?

Yes. ImagineArt was founded in Islamabad, Pakistan, and most of the team still works there. Its headquarters moved to San Francisco in 2026, home to the founders and the enterprise and go-to-market teams.

Is ImagineArt funded?

ImagineArt bootstrapped to more than $35M in annual recurring revenue without a large venture round.