CINDER · 2026
Case study
Krea partners with Cinder to safely launch the world's most aesthetic open-source image model
Krea needed Cinder to red team Krea 2 for enterprise-readiness before open-sourcing one of the most capable creative image models available today, ranking #1 on Artificial Analysis from an independent lab upon release. Cinder delivered results without slowing down release.
5 MIN READ
the model
Open weights demand proof.
- < 1%
- NSFW rate across evaluated generations
- 8 days
- From kickoff call to final delivery
- 2
- Model checkpoints evaluated: Krea 2 raw and Krea 2 post-trained
Shipping a high powered model of this caliber introduces a different kind of challenge than a hosted product does. Once weights are public, any gap in the model becomes permanent. Before Krea 2 could go live, the team needed to know with confidence exactly where the model stood. Krea partnered with Cinder to red team the model before the weights went public, enabling a faster launch where they can actually trust what they're putting out.
Krea 2 is the most expressive open-source image model available today, trained from scratch for complete creative control over look, feel, and creative direction, with a style-reference system that extracts an image's visual character without carrying over its content. Krea AI is backed by a16z and Bain Capital Ventures and trusted by more than 40 million users across 191 countries.
Until we tested with Cinder, the expert in the field, you cannot have that kind of trust enterprises need.
the standard
Safety is a precondition for enterprise success.
Krea has been shipping AI image products since 2022, and increasingly to enterprise customers. In May of 2026, architecture firm Henning Larsen announced a Krea partnership to embed AI image generation into its design workflow, negotiating data security, copyright, and EU AI compliance terms directly into the deal.
The stakes of identifying safety vulnerabilities are high. When guardrails are missing, the first users find the gaps, and the product gets defined by its worst use cases instead of its best ones. For a model heading into enterprise procurement, that risk is the difference between winning or losing a deal.
With Cinder Red Teaming, the model was ready for enterprise customers who have a very high standard. They want and need evidence that a model is safe. The kind of third-party verification they recognize: something they can point to in a procurement conversation and say, definitively, this model has been evaluated by experts.
Krea had run its own internal benchmarks, but those results had not been validated. Enterprise customers wanted external validation.
Our team is obsessive about aesthetics and design, and we feel a real responsibility to make sure that obsession is never turned against itself. This model should never be associated with NSFW content or worse. Keeping it out of the wrong hands is part of protecting the craft it was built for.
the approach
Expert red teaming. Actionable results. Fast.
Cinder ran structured adversarial evaluations across two checkpoints of Krea 2, the raw model and the post-trained variant, with expert human labelers reviewing every generation. Each output was classified across a detailed harm taxonomy, from safe to clearly violative. Cinder also flagged whether violations were implicit, where the model introduced harmful content unprompted, or explicit, where the content was in the prompt itself.
Krea received the full labeled dataset, with prevalence broken down across harm categories and attack vectors, and used Cinder's findings to confirm Krea 2 was ready for public launch.
the result
Red teaming proved model performance.
Krea 2 came back below 1% on NSFW metrics, and while Krea's team had a strong internal sense of where the model stood, the Cinder evaluation gave them proof they could bring into an enterprise conversation.
Speed mattered too. Cinder's work with Krea proved that safety and velocity aren't a trade-off, and an eight-day turnaround from kickoff to delivery gave the team actionable results without delaying launch.
what comes next
The best creative AI and the safest creative AI should be the same product.
Cinder can help every company shipping a generative AI model prove that their model is safe. Krea 2, a model that leads on style control, still comes back under 1% on NSFW evaluations.
As more companies open-source or ship generative AI models at scale, safety needs to be baked in. Cinder provides the industry-trusted guarantee that your model is enterprise ready.
Ship with confidence
Talk with the team that helped Krea evaluate Krea 2 before open-sourcing one of the most capable creative image models available today.