Photoroom co-founder quits executive role

Eliot Andres, one of the people who built Photoroom, is stepping away from the day-to-day executive side of the Paris startup. He co-founded the company with CEO Matthieu Rouif in 2019, when the pitch was simple: make photo editing easy enough for anyone to use without training.

Photoroom has leaned hard on AI to do that work quickly, turning shots into cleaner, more professional-looking visuals in seconds. That idea has clearly aged well. Andres said on LinkedIn that after seven years he is leaving his executive role, but will stay involved as a board member and keep a hand in strategic decisions.

The move is not a clean break. Andres spent most of his time as CTO before shifting into a contributor role this year, and he said he expects his next projects to stay close to AI or apps. Rouif, for his part, made it sound like a friendly handoff rather than a farewell.

The technical job now goes to Javier Sotelo, a former Groupon executive who joined Photoroom at the start of the year. The company has also built up real commercial weight: it was valued at €500m and raised €43m in 2024 in a Series B round, with enterprise customers including DoorDash, Wolt and Decathlon.