French AI image editor Photoroom makes first acquisition

Photoroom, the French photo editing app last valued at $500m, has made its first-ever acquisition, buying a startup which specialises in automated image generation with text layout.

Photoroom’s co-founder & CEO Matthieu Rouif said it was a “big day” for Photoroom, announcing the “strategic” acquisition of GenerateBanners via a social media post from the Google I/O conference.

Explaining the rationale behind the deal, Rouif said GenerateBanners is a technology that “enables the layout and placement of text at scale”.

Photoroom said: “Photoroom’s API already powers millions of product images, but customers needed template-based text composition to convert those images into ready-to-run ads.

“GenerateBanners solved precisely that challenge. It enables consistent branded campaigns across all marketing and commerce channels.”

It is not known the value of the deal.

Thibaut Patel, founder of GenerateBanners, will now lead the API team at Photoroom as its head of API as part of the deal.

Patel said: “Photoroom was an obvious match for GenerateBanners. It has a proven track of record shipping state-of-the-art AI models, and productizing them.”

Separately, Photoroom has also launched a new product, called Visual Ads Automation, which turns product ranges into creative ads.

Founded in 2019, Photoroom wants to democratise photo editing: it’s an easy-to-use photo editing app which matches the quality of a professional photographer minus the expense.

It processes around five billion images a year, hit €50m in annual recurring revenue in 2023, is profitable, and has recently shifted into the enterprise sector, luring in Amazon and DoorDash as customers.