After seven years of helping build Photoroom from an early stage photo editing startup into a large scale visual AI company, co founder Eliot Andres is stepping away from his executive role at the French startup. Andres, who has served primarily as chief technology officer, will remain involved with Photoroom as a board member and strategic contributor.
The leadership change marks a new phase for the Paris based company, which has built its business around making professional quality visual creation accessible to entrepreneurs, sellers, brands and marketing teams through artificial intelligence.
From Startup Idea to Visual AI
Photoroom was founded in 2019 by Matthieu Rouif and Eliot Andres. The idea emerged from Rouif’s experience at GoPro, where he encountered the difficulty of producing product visuals quickly when a designer was unavailable. Rouif and Andres set out to create a simpler way of editing images, eventually turning that idea into Photoroom.
The company initially became known for background removal and mobile photo editing, but has since expanded into a broader visual AI platform. Photoroom says its tools are designed to help businesses create product imagery at scale, with AI supporting tasks such as editing, generating backgrounds and producing visuals suited to ecommerce.
Andres Moves Away From Executive Role
Andres announced that he is stepping down from his executive position after seven years with the company. While leaving his operational leadership role, he will continue to participate in strategic decisions as a board member.
In his announcement, Andres reflected on the original ambition shared by the founders when they applied to Y Combinator, which was to enable anyone to make professional edits without formal training. He said advances in AI have helped bring that ambition closer to reality.
Andres also indicated that he plans to take some time to consider his next projects. His future work, he said, is likely to remain focused on artificial intelligence or consumer applications.
New CTO Takes Charge
As part of the transition, Javier Sotelo is taking over as Photoroom’s chief technology officer. Sotelo joined the company earlier this year after previously holding an executive role at Groupon.
His appointment comes as Photoroom continues to expand the technical foundations behind its AI products. The company has been investing heavily in machine learning and has developed its own foundation model, Photoroom Instant Diffusion, designed specifically for image editing and visual content creation.
Photoroom has also worked on infrastructure capable of supporting AI workloads at significant scale. In 2024, the company said it had more than 150 million app downloads and was using high performance computing infrastructure to train and improve its AI models.
Scaling Visual Commerce
The leadership transition comes as Photoroom increasingly positions itself as infrastructure for visual commerce rather than simply a photo editing application.
According to its current company information, Photoroom processes around 7 billion images each year and supports approximately 1 million brands. The company also says more than 1 million businesses use its tools to sell more effectively, highlighting the growing role of visual content in ecommerce.
Its platform now serves entrepreneurs, marketers and larger teams that need to create large volumes of product visuals without relying entirely on traditional photography and design workflows.
A New Chapter
Andres’s move represents a significant leadership transition for one of France’s prominent AI startups, but his continued presence on the board means the company will retain access to his experience and technical perspective.
CEO and co founder Matthieu Rouif has welcomed the transition, signalling that he expects to continue working closely with Andres in his new capacity as founder and board member.
For Photoroom, the change comes at a time when generative AI is rapidly reshaping visual content creation. With Sotelo taking charge of technology and Andres remaining involved at board level, the company enters its next chapter with a focus on scaling its AI capabilities and making professional visual production accessible to businesses worldwide.