London-based AI firm Edgify has secured a $6.5 million seed funding round, as it seeks to expand work processing data generated at so-called “edge” devices.
The round was led by Octopus Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partners and an unnamed semiconductor “giant,” according to the company. Mangrove partner Hans-Jürgen Schmitz will join Edgify’s board as part of the deal.
Right now, 2015-founded Edgify is primarily used at supermarket self-checkouts. Machines are enabled to make smarter decisions regarding barcodeless produce, leading to quicker and more efficient transactions. Each machines accumulates and distributes information across its network, without sending data to the cloud, making security simpler.
“Edgify allows companies, from any industry, to train complete deep learning and machine learning models, directly on their own edge devices,” said Ofri Ben-Porat, CEO and co-founder of Edgify. “This mitigates the need for any data transfer to the Cloud and also grants them close to perfect accuracy every time, and without the need to retrain centrally.”
Edge AI is becoming an increasingly vital tool for network operators concerned about efficiency and data protection. The edge AI market is expected to grow to a value of $1.15bn by 2023, at a CAGR of 26.5%, according to analyst Markets and Markets.