French AI imaging company PhotoRoom raises $19 million
French startup PhotoRoom announced a $19 million Series A funding round, lead by Balderton Capital with participation from Facebook, Hugging Face and Disney+. Existing investor Adjacent is also investing. Since launch, the PhotoRoom app has been downloaded 40 million-plus times worldwide with a 4.7-star rating from 750,000 reviews.
According to the announcement, the company was founded in late 2019 by Matthieu Rouif and Eliot Andres, for the award-winning PhotoRoom has become “the go-to editing app for consumers, entrepreneurs, and businesses worldwide looking to elevate their online imagery,” including background removal.
Certainly, PhotoRoom isn’t the only app sporting this function but, as Techcrunch points out: “PhotoRoom has focused on one niche in particular — small businesses reselling objects on eBay, Poshmark or Depop. In just a few taps, these marketplace experts can process a batch of photos and create images that are ready to be used. It can help them save a lot of time and sell more products.”
PhotoRoom uses AI to identify different objects and elements on a photo. A flat photo becomes a multi-layer image, which means that users can delete the photo background, blur it or replace it with something else entirely. The same technology can be used to retouch images and remove unwanted objects.
In beta is a generative AI function where customers will be able to generate new images based on the object.
PhotoRoom has a large library of background templates and helps you export images in different formats with each platform’s constraints in mind.
The app has 7 million monthly active users and hundreds of thousands of users pay a subscription fee to unlock all the features in the app. A PhotoRoom subscription currently costs $9.99 a month or $69.99 a year.
“With PhotoRoom we’re democratizing access to tools that can transform how entrepreneurs and creators produce images,” says Rouif. “You’re now 10X faster, 10X cheaper, and 10X better than those big corporations. Working with Balderton Capital, we know we can bring these essential tools to more people, sellers, entrepreneurs, and marketplaces worldwide.”
“By focusing intently on user needs, Matthieu and Eliot have created a product that stands out from the rest,” says Bernard Liautaud, Managing Partner at Balderton Capital. “The importance of online photography is immense and PhotoRoom has both the traction and the ambition to become a market leader.”