Lectra explained this strategic partnership involves acquiring a minority stake of around 30% through a €1.3m ($1.43m) investment, with options to gradually increase its share.

According to Maximilien Abadie, chief strategy officer and chief product officer of Lectra, this strategic partnership will allow its customers to benefit from AQC's expertise and will strengthen Lectra’s value proposition by incorporating an additional link in the value chain for our fashion customers.

Abadie said: "AQC’s ambition to bring textile quality control into the era of Industry 4.0 and address sustainability challenges perfectly aligns with the Lectra group’s strategy."

Pierre Magrangeas and Christian Bracich, co-founders of AQC, added: "Partnering with a leading technology company like Lectra, which has a strong presence in the fashion industry, will allow us to accelerate our technical and commercial development."

Lectra emphasised that as a "major" player in fashion, automotive and furniture markers, the company contributes to the Industry 4.0 revolution by providing software, cutting equipment, data analytics solutions and association services to brands, manufacturers and retailers.

Founded in 2019, AQC is known for developing and selling SaaS solutions based on Artificial Intelligence and innovative equipment for automatic textile defect recognition powered by machine learning algorithms.

AQC aims to accelerate the textile quality control processes, which it believes are still largely manual and rely on the expertise of highly skilled operators.

This follows Lectra's recent announcement of a strategic partnership with Singapore-based AI company Six Atomic to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) in transforming product design and development in the fashion industry.

Six Atomic, founded in 2020, offers AI-powered SaaS solutions that streamline and accelerate garment design processes, allowing fashion brands to optimise their product development timelines.