Artificial intelligence (AI) startup, ZMO.AI announced that it has raised US$8 million in a series A round.
The round was led by Hillhouse Capital and participated by GGV Capital and GSR Ventures, which had previously served as the startup’s angel investors.
Background of ZMO.AI
- ZMO.AI was founded in 2020 by Ella Zhang, Yang Han, Roger Yin and Liqian Ma.
- The China-based startup focuses on creating virtual models to display clothing products through AI algorithms.
- ZMO.AI's software uses "generative adversarial network" that allows users to create virtual full bodies by defining parameters such as skin color, height, pose, face, and body shape.
Key Highlights
- The startup has found a healthy demand from fashion retailers as significant time, energy and money is no longer needed by merchants to hire models for product showcasing; hence reducing the cost of putting products on shelves by 80%.
- The entire cycle of garment manufacturing may take two to three months, from design, fabric selection, pattern making, modeling, to actually hitting the shelves which is a long process.
- Zhang mentioned that the process is shortened with ZMO.AI, where merchants can test garments by putting it on a virtual model, upload it onto the website and then start taking orders right away.
- Besides that, Yin stated that e-commerce companies usually spend an estimated 3% to 5% of their annual gross merchandise value on photoshoots, and ZMO.AI aims to lower the cost to 1%.
- Zhang further added that ZMO.AI is discussing a potential partnership with Chinese online fast fashion retailer SHEIN, which launches thousands of new products every day.
