Photoroom secures $43M in Series B Funding, launches AI photo-editing features forbusinesses

Paris, France-based Photoroom, the popular AI photo editor maker, has successfully closed a $43 million Series B funding round. The funding round, led by previous investor, Balderton and new investor, Aglaé, with YCombinator participating, brings Photoroom’s total funding to $64 million.

“Photoroom shattered all expectations,” says Cameron Curtis, EVP of Worldwide Digital Marketing at Warner Bros. “Its unparalleled ease of use became the catalyst for propelling the Barbie Selfie Generator into the digital spotlight, and captivating audiences worldwide.”

As one of the few companies in the world that has trained a model from scratch, Photoroom will use this funding to accelerate its innovation in generative AI: expanding its model capabilities by investing in more GPUs, securing imagery from leading image providers and photographers, doubling the size of the team by the end of 2024 by hiring the best AI talent, the company said.

“Balderton has witnessed Photoroom’s remarkable journey from its inception, and we are continually impressed by their ability to lead and execute on their user-centric vision,” said Bernard Liautaud, Managing Partner at Balderton. “Photoroom’s generative AI capabilities are unparalleled, and we have no doubt that they will continue to lead the way in this rapidly evolving landscape.”

The announcement comes as Photoroom launches its first foundation model tailor-made for product photography, Photoroom Instant Diffusion (Photoroom ID for short). The first of its kind, Photoroom’s foundation model is trained to master product photography, ensuring images from different sources look consistently styled, as if shot in the same setting.

“The foundation model is the next step in empowering businesses to create amazing product photos without the need to be an expert at prompt engineering or photography,” said Matthieu Rouif, co-founder and CEO at Photoroom. “Our model has been trained to excel at product photography and can quickly adapt to user needs and feedback.”

Having control over a custom model means that Photoroom’s machine learning team will be able to incorporate new research as soon as it is released, the company claims. Photoroom’s custom architecture will also increase the speed of image generation by up to 40%. This means users will be able to generate and iterate on its images much faster than on any other visual AI model.

“We are not only increasing the speed of our model, but also optimizing for quality, through higher resolution, more detailed images, and a larger training dataset than ever before,” said Rouif. “As a user-centric AI company, we designed the architecture to make sense for our users.”

Photoroom is also launching a suite of new AI photo-editing tools that give businesses more creative control over its product images, including:

• AI Backgrounds (formally Instant Backgrounds): Generate improved-quality AI backgrounds for product photographs
• AI Expand: Use generative AI to realistically expand the scene around an existing image
• AI Images: Create custom images from scratch using text prompts
• AI Fill: Customize an item or area of your image with AI for more creative control
• Auto-rotate: Correct the camera angle with AI for more professional images
• AI Upscale: Enhance the resolution of images for higher quality photos
• Image Editing API: Businesses can use Photoroom’s API to generate and edit hundreds of images in seconds

For small businesses, Photoroom’s new foundation model and features help them create professional-quality product images, by giving users more creative control and flexibility, the company claims. The company’s collaboration with photographers and image providers around the world also ensures a diverse dataset, using images to train the model that have been used with the provider’s consent.

For businesses that create and edit a high volume of images, Photoroom has focused on automating photo-editing workflows for teams. Photoroom’s Image Editing API already lets teams like Smartly, Printify, Faire, Bulgari and Netflix edit images by the thousands or millions. The API can be integrated into almost any system and brings Photoroom’s capabilities directly into its customers’ workflows. Over the coming months, Photoroom will also make its newest generative AI features available through the API.

“We were immediately drawn to Photoroom’s disruptive approach to photo-editing for businesses,” said Kristina Chvilova, Partner at Aglaé. “Their dedication to craftsmanship and their ability to attract top-tier brands like Bulgari and Warner Bros. to their platform underscored their potential for long-term success. We believe Photoroom’s innovative technology will continue to revolutionize the way businesses engage with visual content, and we are proud to be a part of their journey.”

 Since launching in 2019, Photoroom has been downloaded more than 150 million times worldwide, is used by thousands of businesses, ranked among the top 6 generative AI products.

Balderton Capital is a multistage venture firm with more than two decades of experience supporting Europe’s founders from Seed to IPO. Previous investments include Darktrace (LON: DARK), Depop, Flywire (NASDAQ: FLYW), Kobalt, MySQL, Nutmeg, Peakon, Recorded Future, Talend (NASDAQ: TLND) and THG (LON: THG). Balderton’s current portfolio includes Aircall, Beauty Pie, Contentful, Dream Games, GoCardless, JOKR, Lendable, Matillon, Merama, Revolut, Tibber, Vestiaire Collective, Wayve and Writer.

Aglaé Ventures is a global investment firm based in Paris, New York, and Los Angeles backed by Agache, the holding company of the Arnault family and the controlling shareholder of LVMH. For nearly 30 years, Agache has backed fast-growing innovative companies at all stages of their development including Airbnb, Automattic, Back Market, Dataiku, eToro, Slack and Spotify.

Since 2005, YCombinator has funded more than 3,000 companies. Today, more than a dozen YC companies are public, more than 60 are valued at over $1 billion, and the combined valuation of YC alumni is over $600 billion.