Computer Vision Provider Matroid Raises $20 Million

By Dan Anderson ● Oct 14, 2020
  • Matroid — a leading U.S. computer vision (CV) provider and leader in machine learning — announced it has raised $20 million in Series B

Matroid — a leading U.S. computer vision (CV) provider and leader in machine learning — announced it has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Energize Ventures with participation from existing investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Intel Capital, and others. This round of funding brings the total to $33.5 million.

With the enterprise success of its product, Matroid plans to utilize the new funding to accelerate product development and go-to-market expansion in manufacturing, industrial IoT (IIoT), and video security markets. And within manufacturing and IIoT, Energize’s corporate investors include General Electric, Schneider Electric, Caterpillar, Invenergy, and several others.

The software-defined sensors that operate on imagery captured by regular cameras are quickly becoming the pinnacle sensor. And sensors are critical for many enterprises, federal agencies, and public safety organizations.

However, a variety of factors have limited the scope of deployments, including the complexity, corner-cases, and training costs associated with building video and machine learning pipelines of sufficient throughput in a way where a deployment can happen in minutes, instead of months. Matroid’s products enables non-software organizations in enterprise to harness the power of software-defined sensors.

Launched in 2016 by Stanford engineers and professors with world-class expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer vision, Matroid unlocks the promise of software-defined sensors through unmatched ease of use in the entire deployment lifecycle.

KEY QUOTES:

“Enterprises have tasted the value that software-defined sensors can provide, but are also feeling the pain of rolling out a conventional computer vision team. Deployments of CV are constrained by Machine Learning engineering time, operator training time, camera interoperability, scaling AI computations, and the difficulty of iterating on neural networks performing important tasks like detailed inspection. With the Matroid product, we set a new standard for ease of use in deploying sensors. With this funding we are excited to take the next steps to bring software-defined sensors to manufacturing and industrial IOT enterprises.”

— Reza Zadeh, CEO and Founder of Matroid

“Reza and the Matroid team are building a world-class platform that marries the expertise of engineers and operators with next-generation computer vision technologies and machine learning algorithms. The Energize team is excited to deploy our financial, operational and industry capital to help Matroid capture market share in energy, industrials and IoT.”

— John Tough, Managing Partner of Energize Ventures

“As the renewable sector continues to grow, we must be on the forefront of new innovations and tools to push us into the future — new digital technologies like Matroid will expedite the energy transition.”

— Michael Polsky, Founder and CEO of Invenergy