Spines Lands $64 Million to Put AI Agents to Work on Book Publishing

BOYNTON BEACH — Getting a book from finished manuscript to store shelves can take a year or more. Spines, an AI publishing company with a growing South Florida presence, says it can do it in weeks, and investors just put $64 million behind that claim.

The company announced on Nov. 9 that it secured $64 million in growth capital. The package combines a $29 million Series A-1 equity round led by Zeev Ventures with a $35 million non-dilutive growth financing facility from Twelve, a credit-focused investment firm. Existing investors Aleph, NordStar, M-Fund and LionTree joined the equity round, along with angel investor Dan Senor.

Spines also said it has reached a $50 million annual revenue run rate after 400% year-over-year growth. Fortune, which interviewed Niv about the raise, said the company declined to disclose its valuation.

Where Spines fits in South Florida

Refresh Miami describes Spines as Boynton Beach-based. When the outlet spoke with founder and CEO Yehuda Niv in February 2025, about 20 of the company’s 100 employees were in the region.

The company’s footprint is spread out. Its press release carries Tel Aviv and New York datelines. Fortune reported that Spines has offices in Israel and New York, that most of its staff work in Eastern Europe, the U.S. and Latin America, and that research and development and management are based in Herzliya, Israel. Niv told Fortune the company now has about 350 employees, with only about 50 in R&D.

How the agents work

Authors bring their own finished manuscript. From there, Spines says specialized AI agents handle editing, proofreading, cover design, formatting, metadata, translation, audiobooks, distribution, royalty management and marketing. Authors can also bring in the company’s human editors, designers and native-speaking language reviewers.

Books go out through more than 100 distribution channels. Fortune listed Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Baker & Taylor among them. A central dashboard tracks sales and royalties across platforms.

Translation is a major push. The platform currently translates from English into seven languages: Spanish, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Polish and Hebrew, with human review. Spines plans to reach 20 target languages within six months. Authors can also produce audiobooks with synthetic voices or a model of their own voice built from a short recording, even in other languages. For children’s books, the company says it has built AI illustration tools that keep characters consistent from page to page.

Niv told Fortune the cover agent reads the manuscript and researches which retail categories and designs give a book its best shot. He said every author he had published in Israel shared the same complaint: “The cover designer didn’t have time to read my book.”

What authors pay

Spines is what the industry calls a hybrid publisher. Authors pay up front, as they would to self-publish, but get more service, and the publisher also takes a share of royalties.

According to Fortune, packages start at about $3,000 and run to $20,000 for a premium tier that publishes a book in three languages, each with an audiobook. Most authors choose a mid-tier bundle costing $5,000 to $7,000. Spines recently raised the author’s share to 80% of net royalties from 70%, and it reports royalties monthly rather than twice a year or annually.

More than 8,000 American authors have published through Spines, accounting for about 12,000 titles, and around 400 new authors join each month.

“AI giving authors superpowers”

Selling AI to a wary creative industry, Spines draws a firm line. “We don’t believe the future of publishing is AI writing books. We believe the future is AI giving authors superpowers,” Niv said in the announcement.

He told Fortune that Spines publishes only books “100% written by humans” and uses software to try to screen out AI-generated manuscripts. Fortune noted that some of the company’s AI use, especially AI-designed covers, may raise copyright questions, since U.S. courts and the Copyright Office have held that images made entirely by AI can’t be copyrighted. Niv said Spines licenses its image-generation tools and passes a license on to authors.

Zeev Ventures founding partner Oren Zeev, an early investor in Audible, said: “Spines has all the ingredients to become the category leader in the next generation of publishing.” Aleph co-founder Michael Eisenberg, who has written nine books, said that “writing the manuscript is only the first step in bringing a book into the world.”

What the money is for

Niv told Fortune that the debt facility will fund growth, while the equity will go to product development and expansion into other English-speaking markets, including the U.K., Canada and Australia. He said he is aiming for 200% to 300% annual growth. He also said Spines is in early talks with one of the Big Five U.S. publishers about using its AI agents to help run that house’s services.

Why it matters for South Florida tech

Several of the South Florida AI rounds announced this month, including Astral’s $5.5 million and OnSport AI’s $2 million pre-seed, were early-stage deals. A $50 million run rate and a $64 million raise put Spines in a different weight class, and the mix of equity and non-dilutive debt is a structure more local founders may consider as revenue grows. Whether Spines grows its Palm Beach County presence along with its revenue is worth watching.