PhotoRoom raises $19 million after garnering 40 million downloads

Paris-based startup PhotoRoom announced on Monday that it has raised $19 million in a Series funding round after garnering over 40 million downloads for its popular background remover app of the same name.

As reported by TechCrunch, the round was led by Balderton Capital, and saw participation from angels from Facebook, Disney+ and Hugging Face, as well as its existing backer Adjacent.

While there are dozens of other apps that allow users to remove backgrounds from images, PhotoRoom specifically focuses on small businesses selling goods on eBay, Depop and Poshmark. It lets them erase backgrounds first and then turn them into product images just in seconds.

The app, which currently has more than 7 million monthly active users, also offers various features including batch editing, hundreds of background templates, and the ability to export images in a variety of formats and sizes that fit the requirements of different platforms.

Last year, it was featured in Apple’s Apps We Love section, and also named one of the Best Everyday Essentials on Google’s Play Store.

Also Read: The Best Free Photo Editing Apps for Android

Using the funding money, the startup plans to integrate generative AI into the PhotoRoom app, beginning with text-to-image model Stable Diffusion which now lets pro users add backgrounds to their images that will be generated from text prompts.

“Until now, we grabbed an object and we erased the background. But then users have been looking for a background to put the object back in front of a template,” said Matthieu Rouif, the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of PhotoRoom.

Balderton Capital’s managing partner Bernard Liautaud commented: “By focusing intently on user needs, Matthieu and Eliot have created a product that stands out from the rest. The importance of online photography is immense and PhotoRoom has both the traction and the ambition to become a market leader.”