NtechLab raises $15M and Percepta Labs gets $1M for contrasting facial recognition markets

NtechLab has raised $15 million in financing from two sovereign wealth funds to continue testing on its aggression detection technology and open offices to sell its biometric facial recognition and other machine learning technologies around the world, according to Forbes.

The funding comes from the Russian Direct Investment Fund and an investor in the Middle East which the company declined to name. Forbes reports NtechLab has received funding from United Arab Emirates sovereign fund Mubadala Investment Company.

The aggression detection technology, which combines the company’s algorithms for silhouette and emotion detection with action detection, could roll out to customers next year. The first office is planned for Latin America, with plans including a Middle East office and potentially a headquarters in Asia.

AI Now has called for affect recognition to be banned, but the market for the technology is expected to be worth $90 billion by 2024.

NtechLab cofounder Alexander Kabakov tells Forbes the company’s main advantage is scale.

The company’s Head of R&D and Co-founder Artem Kukharenko told Biometric Update in July that the company can run more than 100 videos on a single GPU.

Kabakov says Moscow caught 34 criminal suspects with the help of NtechLab’s biometric technology in just the first 10 days of January.

ADT invests $1M in facial recognition anonymization, loss prevention startup

“Ethical AI” startup Percepta Labs will receive more than $1 million in investment from commercial security provider ADT Commercial, which will work with Percepta to develop and test the company’s technology for anonymizing race, gender, and age from facial recognition data.

The investment is intended to bring the socially responsible AI technology to commercialization.

Percepta’s proprietary technology detects shoplifting incidents in real-time with advanced action recognition techniques, according to the announcement, to scrub demographic data from the feed.

“We’re so proud to place our support in forward-thinking organizations like Percepta, who are aiming to truly revolutionize the industry,” states ADT Executive Vice President Dan Bresingham. “We pride ourselves on being at the forefront of change in our industry. We believe Percepta could signal a tidal shift in how we approach AI, facial recognition, and data collection, and we look forward to seeing how their technology continues to develop.”

Precepta’s algorithm is also promising for the accuracy of its loss prevention technology, with early tests showing greater than double the accuracy of human loss prevention personnel in detecting shoplifting, the company says.

“AI’s presence in our lives has skyrocketed, yet it poses ethical concerns that have not been sufficiently addressed. We’ve made these concerns a key priority and are proud to have developed an ethical AI technology that counteracts these biases in the world of retail and beyond,” says Philippe Sawaya, CEO of Percepta. “We look forward to seeing how ADT Commercial’s vast experience and commercial network will accelerate Percepta’s growth. We’re excited to partner with them in our shared mission to support socially responsible AI security solutions.”

Article Topics

AI  |  anonymization  |  biometric data  |  biometrics  |  emotion recognition  |  facial recognition  |  funding  |  NTechlab