When she was the CEO of OnlyFans, the now $7 billion-in-revenue tech platform known as a home for adult content, Amrapali (Ami) Gan got to know many content creators. They were building gigantic businesses on OnlyFans, bringing in hundreds of thousands a dollars a month posting content ranging from sensual images to pornography, and chatting with their subscribers or fans. OnlyFans’ secret (alongside its relatively lax content policies) was how easy it made monetization for creators. There were endless options for how to monetize—subscriptions, pay-to-unlock content, paying to go to the top of a creator’s DM inbox.
Since Gan left OnlyFans in 2023, the creator economy has only grown. (The business had just crossed $1 billion in annual revenue when she was in charge; she was promoted to CEO from a role leading marketing.) The tech that powers it has also advanced through generative AI, which can create images and video or act as an avatar to chat with fans.
Those two factors are influencing Gan’s next move: a platform powered by AI that makes monetization more accessible for emerging creators without big followings. The new startup is called Vylit. Gan and her cofounder Kailey Magder raised $2.7 million for the venture, Fortune is the first to report. The funding was anchored by Windmill Chain Fund, which belongs to a mysterious investor who doesn’t share her identity in public. Angel investors include Manifest Financial and Aaron Day, CEO and founder of Amaze. It’s Gan and Magder’s second venture together; the pair had been running a marketing consultancy over the past two years.
Courtesy of Vylit
The web-based platform, which has a team of about six employees, is set to launch in December 2025. Vylit will require users to be 18 or older and will allow topless content, but not the more explicit content permitted on OnlyFans. The startup says it’s “rethinking how provocative content is shared and monetized.” It’s not a home for porn like OnlyFans, but it is a place for monetizing the casual thirst trap, its creators say. Creators can also use AI image generation to generate images of themselves to sell to followers.
On OnlyFans, creators often depend on large followings on other platforms such as Instagram and X to drive subscriptions. But it doesn’t have built-in discoverability. That’s the main complaint Gan heard from creators, and the one she aims to solve. Vylit plans to incorporate the discoverability of Instagram or TikTok with the creator features of a platform like OnlyFans.
Courtesy of Vylit
Major social media platforms have started to experiment with some of the features on Vylit’s roadmap, like AI avatars to chat with followers, which launched to mixed reviews on Instagram. “They experiment with it, but it doesn’t really end up taking off,” Gan says. Magder says she was inspired by the customization of “early internet” platforms like MySpace.
“What would stop just any regular person who actually does want to create content and monetize it?” Magder says she asked. “What’s stopping them from actually doing so?”
“We really want to enable anyone to be a creator,” Gan says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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