Alitheon is a company that is known as a developer of machine vision software designed to trace the lifecycle of goods without labels, markings, or packaging. To learn more about the company, Pulse 2.0 interviewed Alitheon CEO Roei Ganzarski.
Roei Ganzarski’s Background
Roei Ganzarski is originally from Israel and he came to the US about 25 years ago to attend graduate school at the University of Washington.
“I have more than 30 years of experience in leadership, of which over 20 are in disruptive solutions and technologies,” said Ganzarski. “I have worked at both startups and global giants. Before Alitheon, I led operations, strategy, and development at numerous companies, including Boeing, BoldIQ, magniX, and Eviation. Currently, I am the CEO of Alitheon, an optical AI company solving counterfeit and gray market identification and product traceability.”
Formation Of Alitheon
Alitheon had originally launched in early 2017 by a small group of brilliant people experienced in real-world machine vision and advanced mathematics. And the goal was to find an easy and practical solution for the $3 trillion problem of counterfeit and gray market goods and untraceable items.
“Most of the incumbent solutions relied on ‘additives’ like markers, hologram stickers, QR codes, and NFC tags, all of which can be damaged, removed from the item, or even counterfeited themselves,” Ganzarski explained. “They also require altering the product itself and its production line. We wanted to create a solution that did not require adding anything or manipulating an item like fingerprints are for people. And that’s what FeaturePrint is.”
Challenges Faced Building The Company
What are some of the challenges that Ganzarski faced in building the company and how has the macroeconomic climate affected the company? Ganzarski told me that developing this kind of technological solution was not an easy task.
“We needed it to be scalable, repeatable, and easy to use. Moreover, it had to be reliable. We worked on eliminating the flaws of currently available solutions while adding a level of reliability and simplicity never before available to companies. The macroeconomic climate has indeed impacted the company in two distinct ways. On the one hand, the economy, stock market, tech layoffs, bank collapses, and crypto lies have created a bit of an environment of fear, cash hoarding, and a wait-and-see approach to anything new,” Ganzarski acknowledged. “On the other hand, the increased spread and challenge of supply chains, online shopping, and remote work have made counterfeiting and gray markets more lucrative and less risky. So, these fraudulent activities are growing. Moreover, they are expanding into higher consequence items from car brake pads to medicine to aircraft parts. This is no longer a problem just for luxury brands. Everything is impacted. This has created a stronger demand for advanced technologies and solutions like ours.”
Core Products
FeaturePrint is known as an advanced optical AI solution that “fingerprints” items with just one photo. And this enables customers to identify, authenticate, and trace their products, from car parts to luxury goods, from collectibles to gold bars, and from computer boards to pharmaceuticals.
“This technology helps eliminate counterfeits, shut down gray-market activity, and keep track of each item,” Ganzarski pointed out. “As we like to point out – no bar codes, no QR codes, no stickers, no tags, no ‘invisible’ dust, no markers, no holograms, no special cameras, no special lighting, no nonsense!”
Here is an overview of how the technology works:
Significant Milestones
What were some of Alitheon’s most significant milestones? Ganzarski cited the following:
— Being selected by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) (the global standards association for gold) as one of only five companies in the world (and the only one based in the U.S.) to support their Gold Bar Integrity (GBI) initiative.
— Being selected by Pharma Manufacturing as a winner for their 2022 Innovation Awards.
— Raising a $10 million Series A round with BMW as the lead investor.
Customer Success Story
While many of the company’s customers want to remain anonymous, Ganzarski provided Argor-Heraeus as an example. Using Alitheon’s technology, Argor-Heraeus closed gaps in gold tracking, providing more transparency from the mine to the end user. For years, Argor-Heraeus has been working to increase transparency in the gold business with the help of new technologies and innovations. Along with artificial intelligence, Argor-Heraeus also uses DNA markers and PCR tests for traceability from the mine to the refinery.
Funding
In September 2022, Alitheon announced it raised a $10 million Series A round with BMW as the lead investor.
Total Addressable Market
What is the total addressable market (TAM) size that Alitheon is pursuing? “We are going after $180 billion spent every year on avoiding counterfeits, gray market, and untraceable items. Because $3 trillion is still lost every year as a result. This needs to be solved, and we are ready to do so,” analyzed Ganzarski.
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Alitheon from its competition? “Alitheon takes a unique approach. Instead of pursuing the futile task of detecting counterfeits or gray-market items, Alitheon’s patented FeaturePrint solution detects the authenticity of items by identifying originals,” Ganzarski replied. “Alitheon provides a reliable, secure, and integrated solution. This approach can be applied to anything from aircraft and auto parts to computer chips and precious metals.”
The current measures are considered insufficient. And additives like bar codes, QR codes, tags, and hologram stickers can be erased, lost, damaged, moved from part to part, and can even counterfeit themselves. Plus machine learning-based systems that try to identify counterfeits are limited in scope and performance to only anti-counterfeiting. They cannot address gray markets or product tracing.
Future Company Goals
What are some of Alitheon’s future company goals? “Our goal is to make our solution available to all, from large manufacturers to small businesses, to consumers who want to protect their own items,” Ganzarski concluded.
