PhotoRoom, an AI photo editing app, is raising $50-60 million at a valuation of $500-600 million

An app that allows users to take, manage, and share photos. It is considered to be the most popular app in the mobile world over the years. Now, the influx of AI is opening up the market for a new wave of startups to step into the ring.

PhotoRoom, a startup company from Paris France It has created a popular AI-based image editing app and API targeting e-commerce sellers. media experts, etc. (It was even used to power a personal Barbie poster site.) TechCrunch now understands that the startup is in the process of closing on funding.

Multiple sources said the startup has raised between $50 million and $60 million at a pre-money valuation of between $500 million and $600 million. In a market where AI is gaining traction, overall funding is still very limited. PhotoRoom has Get a lot of attention And it seems to get people to open their checkbooks.

It is not clear who the full list of investors is. One source said Balderton, who led the startup's last round, is also leading this round. Others said other previous backers were also on board along with new investors. “They are choosing between different semester papers,” one source said.

In addition to Balderton, existing backers include Adjacent, Kima Ventures, FJ Labs, Meta, Y Combinator (which were members of the Summer 2020 cohort, the first remote cohort post-COVID-19) ) and a number of angels including Yann LeCun, Zehan Wang (formerly of Magic Pony and Twitter), executives from Hugging Face and Disney+, and more. PhotoRoom has raised $70-80 million, with the round closing at Are these numbers?

PhotoRoom and CEO Matthieu Rouif, who co-founded PhotoRoom along with CTO Eliot Andres, declined to comment on questions related to the funding. Balderton did not respond to requests for comment for this story. The others asked to remain unspecified. source

Paris, where PhotoRoom is based, has become a key city for AI development.

Along with a stream of other smaller startups, Meta also has a large AI lab led by Yann LeCun; Hugging Face, currently based in New York with a Paris startup; and Mistral AI with modeling ambitions. A large, foundational language that wants to be kept open source. It is currently valued at $2 billion.

The rise of PhotoRoom also follows other trends. that is currently covering the world of technology. which is beyond the current era regarding AI

Over the years The camera has easily become the most important feature on a smartphone. This may be even more important than the phone's basic features. But most of the trend's wealth has fallen to consumer apps and their ecosystems. PhotoRoom stands out in some of its key positions. At least for now as a B2B tool.

PhotoRoom initially caught the attention of small businesses. ecommerce merchant and many retailers are looking for image editing software that is fast, easy to use, and cost-effective, but still provides high-quality results for individual images or sets of images: Users can now cut out images from their backgrounds. Use other effects Some of which can be ordered and created with word commands. Customers use those images in online sales listings on platforms like Depop, eBay, and Poshmark. LT LT LT LT LT LT LT LT

But thanks to its API, PhotoRoom has also found an audience among larger customers. Warner Bros used the API to create a social marketing campaign for this summer's Barbie movie, where fans could crop their own photos and insert them into posters. Barbie in your own way The tool and resulting poster have been shared more than 1 million times, PhotoRoom said.