Picsart

Born in Armenia, Built for the World

In November 2011, a computer science professor named Hovhannes Avoyan sat down with two engineers — Artavazd Mehrabyan and Mikayel Vardanyan — in Yerevan, Armenia, to build something simple: a photo editing tool for the smartphone age. What emerged over the next decade was Picsart, the world's largest creative platform and the first tech unicorn to emerge from Armenia.

The numbers tell a striking story. More than 150 million people use Picsart every month. Its apps have been downloaded over one billion times across 180 countries. Every month, the community creates and shares nearly one billion images — a scale that rivals the output of any media company on Earth. In August 2021, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led a $130M Series C at a valuation exceeding $1 billion, cementing Picsart's status as the defining creative tool for the Gen Z and millennial creator economy.

AI at the Core

Picsart's shift from photo editor to AI-native platform accelerated in 2021 when it hired Humphrey Shi as Chief Scientist to found Picsart AI Research (PAIR). By 2022 the app offered generative text-to-image tools, AI Avatars, and an AI font generator. In 2024, a landmark partnership with Getty Images produced a custom generative model trained exclusively on licensed content — enabling commercial-safe AI image creation inside the platform. The enterprise API arm, Picsart for Developers, gives B2B partners access to background removal, generative fill, and image enhancement endpoints on a usage-based model, with clients including PopSockets and major e-commerce operators.

• Background Removal: Sub-second AI object and background separation, cited at ~99% accuracy for common use cases
• Generative AI Image: Text-to-image and AI Replace tools powered by Picsart's proprietary and partner diffusion models
• AI Avatars & SketchAI: Launched December 2022 and January 2023 respectively, driving viral adoption among Gen Z users
• API & SDK: Picsart for Developers enables third-party embedding of editing and generative features at scale

With estimated annual revenue of ~$158M and a workforce of over 1,100 people across Miami, Yerevan, and global offices, Picsart sits at the intersection of consumer social, professional design, and enterprise AI — a rare triple threat in the creative software landscape.