Artificial Intelligence Start-up Umbo CV Raises 2.8M Seed Round to Bring Deep Neural Network to the Professional Security Industry

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 28, 2016) - Umbo CV, an artificial intelligence start-up and provider of event recognition systems that think and learn like humans for the professional security industry, announced that it completed a $2.8 million round of seed funding led by AppWorks Ventures. Also participating were Mesh Ventures, Fortune Global 500 Wistron Corp. and Phison Electronics.

Up to now, the security industry has grappled with ways to receive real-time notifications of intruders or incidents, having tested pre-defined algorithms-based systems that failed. Umbo CV aims to solve this problem. The company has developed algorithms to link images from multiple cameras, thus giving machines a more in-depth understanding of real-time occurrences. Once the cameras are connected, the A.I. begins to learn from the scene and alerts the security officer of what it thinks is an anomaly. For example, when a person has just climbed over the fence or when a car is driving in the opposite direction on a freeway.

"Being able to attract such world-class investors is recognition of the large market potential of Umbo CV's unique AI technology. Bringing neural networks to the professional security industry makes A.I. quicker and smarter," said Shawn Guan, CEO of Umbo CV." This funding gives us the financial strength to advance our goals of developing automated event recognition systems that are capable of spotting anomalies from security cameras, leading to real-time protection of people and their assets with less human capital."

Guan noted that tech giants like Google and Facebook have been in hot pursuit of deep neural networks using big data with projects like self-driving cars and facial recognition in photos. Yet, the surveillance industry, which captures 7.2 billion hours of footage a day, still relies primarily on human labor to process the data.

"Umbo CV is an alumni of AppWorks Accelerator batch 9. We found in Umbo CV a team of world-class engineers in software, hardware and AI. We felt they were head and shoulders above the rest of the field," said Jamie Lin, founding partner at AppWorks Ventures. "Umbo CV is clearly poised to capitalize on what has become the new wave of security, where AI meets traditional surveillance practices: deep neural net intelligence."

Umbo CV will leverage the funds to expand R&D, marketing and sales in support of the launch of its first product, Umbo SmartDome, the company's self-learning cloud camera that tells you when something interesting is going on, along with Aqua SmartCloud, its web management platform. Early prototypes of the product have already beaten current state-of-the-art results in recognizing different objects in small datasets, and the team is ready to scale up.

Umbo CV was founded in 2014 by seasoned leaders and technologists in AI, robotic vision and surveillance. The management team includes:

• Shawn Guan, CEO: A security industry professional, Guan was an early member and product sales director of a successful surveillance startup, NUUO Inc., that went IPO in 2012.
  
  
• Dr. Ping-Lin Chang, CTO: Dr. Chang holds a doctorate in robotic vision from Imperial College London, where he focused on 3D reconstruction and augmented reality with da Vinci robot's endoscope. He was also a post-doctoral researcher at UCL specializing in tracking catheters and guidewires under fluoroscopic images.
  
  
• Dr. Tingfan Wu, Chief Scientist: A PhD in robotic vision from UCSD, Dr. Wu developed the facial expression software used by the U.S. government for airport security. He was also part of the team at facial expression start-up Emotient, acquired by Apple. Additionally, he led the perception efforts for IHMC, during the DARPA Robotic Challenge, resulting in first place win for the team in the US.
  
  
• Antony Ko, VP Hardware: Ko was previously an HTC director and led the hardware development of over 20 smartphones including the original HTC Butterfly.
  
  

Umbo CV will launch its first product at the ISC West Show, April 6-8 in Las Vegas (Booth #32056) and plans to begin shipping worldwide shortly thereafter. The first few shipments will be used to fulfill the $1.4 million pre-orders and purchase intentions already received.

About Umbo CV
Founded in 2014, Umbo CV provides artificial intelligence solutions for the professional security market. Developer of the first self-learning smart security camera for enterprises, Umbo CV's mission is to create automated event recognition systems that are capable of spotting anomalies, leading to real-time protection of people and their assets with less human capital. The company's products have a wide range of applications from small offices, local stores, and hotel franchises to large national retailers, city surveillance, school districts, warehouse, major transportation facilities and much more. https://umbocv.com