Sberbank acquires stake in biometrics firm VisionLabs

Russian banking and financial services company Sberbank has acquired 25.07% of facial recognition developer VisionLabs, with the remaining stake belonging to the company’s founders and venture fund Sistema_VC.

The bank considers the investment in VisionLabs a “major first step” towards building a biometrics platform for Sberbank involving face, voice and retina identification. Sberbank will use the VisionLabs LUNA platform as the foundation for the identification platform which will be used inside Sberbank’s ecosystem and also be available to the wider market.

The deal will also support the development of VisionLabs projects in international markets, including Europe, the US and Asia. Sberbank and VisionLab also reached an agreement on the future involvement of an international strategic investor as one of the company’s shareholders.

“For us this deal with Sberbank is paramount recognition of our achievements,” commented founder and CEO of VisionLabs Alexander Khanin. “Together with such partners we are building Russia’s largest biometric platform and similar large-scale projects in the financial sector, retail, insurance, advertising, and access control and security.”

Article Topics

biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  investment  |  Russia  |  VisionLabs