The AI photo editing platform built for e-commerce sellers, from solo resellers to enterprise
HQ: Paris, France (also New York) | Founded: 2019 | Employees: ~400-500 (2026, est.) | Stage: Late Stage VC ($500M valuation, Feb 2024) | Website: https://www.photoroom.com
Photoroom was founded in Paris in 2019 by Matthieu Rouif (CEO) and Eliot Andres (CTO). Rouif, an ex-GoPro Senior Product Manager and Stanford-trained engineer, was frustrated by spending hours hand-tracing product images in Photoshop; he left, studied machine learning, and built a prototype with Andres in two weeks. They went through Y Combinator (Summer 2020), and launched iOS in February 2020. A cold-tweet to Gary Vaynerchuk seeded an early base of e-commerce resellers.\n\nThe product is purpose-built for e-commerce: AI background removal (with claimed ~99% accuracy), AI-generated studio/lifestyle backgrounds, AI shadows and relighting, a Virtual Model that puts clothing on AI-generated human models, ghost-mannequin and flat-lay effects, batch editing of up to 250 images, and marketplace-specific export presets for Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Zalando, TikTok Shop, and more. It ships as iOS/Android apps, a web app, and an enterprise API.\n\nFinancially, Photoroom has been remarkably capital-efficient: it reached ~$20M ARR on only ~$2M of invested capital. It raised a YC seed ($125K), a ~$1.2M seed (Adjacent, Kima, FJ Labs), a $19M Series A (Balderton, Nov 2022), and a $43M Series B at a $500M valuation (Balderton + Aglaé, Feb 2024). The company is profitable and, by 2024, was estimated to be doing ~$94M ARR. It grew to 300M+ registered users and 3M+ images processed daily, and its API counts Netflix, Warner Bros., DoorDash, and Mercari among customers. In 2025-26 it expanded: its first acquisition (GenerateBanners, May 2025) added visual-ads automation; a Depop partnership embedded its editing in seller flow; and in 2026 it launched AI video generation, a product-fidelity QA layer, and Visual Agents for enterprise pipelines, while co-founder Eliot Andres stepped down as CTO (Aug 2026) with ex-Groupon's Javier Sotelo taking over.
Photoroom is the strongest example of Europe's success in applied generative AI: a genuinely profitable, capital-efficient business that found a laser-focused niche (e-commerce product photography) rather than chasing a broad creative platform. Co-founder Matthieu Rouif — an ex-GoPro product lead — nailed the workflow sellers actually need: remove the background, generate a studio or lifestyle scene, put it on a virtual model, batch-edit a whole catalog, and export marketplace-ready in seconds. The results are striking: profitable since ~2021, roughly $94M ARR (est.) on only ~$64M raised, a $500M valuation, 300M+ registered users, and the dominant Shopify AI photo app. Risks: fierce competition from Canva, Adobe, and well-funded AI rivals, and a consumer base with modest willingness-to-pay — but its enterprise API (Netflix, Warner Bros., DoorDash) and marketplace integrations are a durable moat.
Browse: Home | Blog | About | All Startups A-Z | View full profile on StartupWiki