We help enterprise brands aggregate AI models, enforce governance, and scale creative and media, safely.
From insight to production to distribution, we unify the entire marketing workflow in one platform.
Most enterprise teams are stuck in pilot purgatory, testing AI tools that never scale, stitching together fragmented workflows, and watching budgets disappear into non-working spend. We built Pencil to end that.
We aggregate the best AI models from every provider –OpenAI, Google, Adobe, and more– into a single governed platform. This is what we call the Open Garden: you're never locked into one vendor's roadmap. You get the best model for every use case, today and tomorrow.
Our platform unifies the entire marketing workflow –from insight and creative concept through production, governance, and media distribution. Enterprise teams can design, orchestrate, and scale creative systems that hold up in production, across markets and languages, without sacrificing brand control.
Act 1 is efficiency. Reduce creative production costs by up to 50%, automate localization, and free up budget buried in agency fees and manual process.
Act 2 is growth. Reinvest those savings into media performance –more variants, better ROAS, faster iteration.
We believe AI should be a tool for the humans behind great marketing, not a replacement for them. The right tool changes what's possible.
SOC2 certified. No-Train policy. IP indemnification. Built for the security, scale, and governance that global brands actually need.
Trusted by Diageo, Unilever, Indeed, and L'Oréal. Gartner Cool Vendor 2025.
Founded in 2018. Part of The Brandtech Group since 2023.
Rating Reviews
Rating is calculated based on
1
review and is evolving.
Pros: Some of the engineering managers genuinely care and try to shield their teams from constant changes. For a tech startup, there's decent project autonomy, which is good for a Software Engineer to own their work.
Cons: Upper leadership's vision often shifts without much warning, which creates a lot of re-work. There's not enough clarity on career progression here in the San Francisco office, and it feels like we're constantly reacting instead of building strategically.
Advice to Management: Management really needs to solidify a long-term strategy and stick to it. Better communication from the top down, especially about changes, would go a long way. Also, invest in clearer career paths for individual contributors.
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What is the typical salary range for a software engineer at Pencil in San Francisco, and how does it compare to other tech companies in the Bay Area?
For a software engineer role at Pencil in San Francisco, salaries generally range from $120,000 to $170,000 annually, depending on experience and specific team. This range is competitive within the broader Bay Area tech market, though it may be slightly lower than top-tier companies with very aggressive compensation packages.
