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Breuninger-funded start-up autoRetouch wins prestigious Cloud Award

29. January 2021

Breuninger-funded start-up autoRetouch wins prestigious Cloud Award

Innovative business awarded "Oscar of the tech industry"

Good news from the USA: The Breuninger-funded start-up autoRetouch GmbH was named "most promising start-up of the year" at this year's Cloud Awards. Less than a year after it was founded, the young company convinced the expert jury with its innovative, AI-based image editing technology and successfully prevailed against an international field of applicants.

Hundreds of technology companies from America, Australia, Europe and the Middle East compete annually for the prestigious Cloud Awards, the "Oscars of the tech industry". Less than a year after it was founded, the Stuttgart-based company autoRetouch has now been awarded the coveted "most promising start-up of the year" prize at this year's Cloud Awards.

The jury based its choice primarily on the newly developed, AI-based image editing technology, which is revolutionising how classic product images are edited for use in e-commerce. In addition, the young business impressed the jury of experts with its easy handling for customers, its self-service pricing as well as its user-friendly access to the innovative Ghost Mannequin technology on offer.

"Winning this award after such a short time is testament to the fact that innovation today doesn't just happen in Silicon Valley," said a delighted Alexander Ciorapciu, CEO of autoRetouch GmbH, about the award. "I am incredibly proud of both my team and our partnership with Breuninger, and I am very positive about the year ahead. We still have lots of things in the pipeline at autoRetouch and we are looking forward to taking the next steps with the help of this tailwind."

Breuninger is also delighted about the spin-off start-up's win: "The autoRetouch award vindicates our decision as a leading fashion and lifestyle company to invest in this innovative start-up as well as digital business models," said Holger Blecker, CEO at Breuninger. "We at Breuninger believed in the digital image editing technology developed by autoRetouch right from the outset and I am very happy for the entire team that this development is now gaining the industry recognition it deserves!"

With the newly developed image editing technology, online shop photos can be edited automatically. Normally, an image retoucher would need up to 20 minutes to create a product image from two raw images. Ghost Mannequin AI from autoRetouch intelligently merges two raw images, namely product and inlay shots, in seconds with just one click. Breuninger has invested 3.2 million in the innovative start-up and is already using the technology to edit its own online shop photos for breuninger.com.