Union Square Ventures is a private equity and venture capital firm focused on early-stage, growth capital, late-stage, and startup financing. The USV portfolio companies create services that have the potential to fundamentally transform important markets.  It exclusively invests in the internet world, focusing on the applications layer of the web, internet services, and web services that create large networks as well as the mobile sector. Some of its invested companies are based in New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, and places in between. It typically makes a starting investment in portfolio companies of $1 million. In certain Series Around cases, the firm may make a starting investment between $2.5 million to $3 million. It typically invests up to $20 million in any single company. Union Square Ventures was founded in 2003 and is based in New York, United States.

Union Square Ventures

Qualcomm Ventures is the investment arm of Qualcomm Incorporated. Founded in 2000, Qualcomm Ventures is a corporate venture capital fund with over 150 active portfolio companies and more than 20 exits over a billion dollars, including 99 Taxis, Cruise Automation, Fitbit, Invensense, NQ Mobile, Waze, and more. As a global investor, Qualcomm Ventures helps connect entrepreneurs to the resources, relationships, and deep industry expertise they need to succeed in the mobile technology ecosystem.

Qualcomm Ventures

Lux Capital manages over $5 billion in assets focused on founding, seed, early-stage, and growth investments at the intersection of technology and the sciences. Lux takes an active role in helping entrepreneurs build successful businesses in high-growth sectors. Its investment team has built over 20 companies from scratch. Lux's investment strategy ensures portfolio companies are better connected, have a deeper insight, and command industry leadership faster than their competitors.

Lux Capital

Google Ventures invests in sectors including life sciences, consumer, enterprise, crypto, climate, and frontier technology. With Alphabet as its sole limited partner, Google Ventures focuses on long-term investments. Its operating partners assist startups in design, equity, diversity & inclusion, talent, and engineering and help them connect with Google for technology and expertise. Founded in 2009 as Google Ventures, Google Ventures manages over $8 billion in assets with 400 active portfolio companies in North America and Europe. Some notable investments include Uber, Nest, Slack, GitLab, and One Medical. Google Ventures is based in the San Francisco Bay Area with offices in Cambridge, New York, and London.

Google Ventures

Osage University Partners is a venture capital firm focused on investing in startups that are commercializing university technologies. Osage partners with research universities to invest in their innovative startups shareing its investment profit with partner institutions. The firm invests in software, hardware, and life science companies at all stages of company development. To date, it has partnered with over 80 universities, including 36 of the top 50 U.S. institutions by research expenditures, and has invested in over 50 of their spinouts.

OUP (Osage University Partners)

NYU's seed-stage venture capital fund invests exclusively in startups founded by, and/or commercializing technologies and intellectual property developed by current NYU students, faculty, and researchers. The Fund will provide needed capital, contacts with the entrepreneurial and venture communities, and just as important, practical management and marketing expertise to transform NYU ideas and inventions into successful, growing companies. The Fund makes approximately three to four investments per year in partnership with other angel investors and seed/venture capital funds. The Fund will recycle investment returns from the successful sale of portfolio companies back into the University to finance further research and future ventures.

NYU Innovation Venture Fund

LDV Capital is an early stage venture fund that invests in people building visual technology businesses. LDV collaborates with deep technical teams that leverage computer vision, machine learning, and AI to analyze visual data. LDV Capital has been investing in pre-seed and seed stage teams across North America and Europe since 2012 from New York City. With LDV's inner circle of computer vision experts, serial entrepreneurs, technical advisors, growth hackers, marketers, and more, LDV leverages their network to help founders navigate the challenges of building a visual tech business.

LDV Capital

Born out of a love for building startups and a passion for backing entrepreneurs with heart, Corazon Capital (spanish for “heart”), a leading Chicago-based venture fund, brings a coastal approach to Seed and Series A investing. With a rare blend of investing experience and operating expertise, Corazon provides unusually pragmatic, actionable counsel to the entrepreneurs it supports. Corazon believes that the best entrepreneurs and the smartest VCs will intentionally solicit both financial and operating investors in their syndicates, with Corazon recognized across geographies for its deep operating knowledge and reach inside and outside of Chicago.  Corazon’s co-founders, Sam Yagan and Steve Farsht, have accomplished track records as investors and operators. Sam co-founded SparkNotes, eDonkey, and OKCupid before posting up as CEO of Match Group (NASDAQ: MTCH) through its IPO, and most recently taking the reins as the CEO of Shoprunner. As a General Partner at Norwest Equity Partners, Steve participated in its growth from five to twenty-five investment professionals. He honed his operating chops as CEO of DCM Services, an NEP portfolio company. After moving to Chicago, Steve immersed himself in the startup ecosystem, first as COO of Tap.me and then co-CEO of Techstars Chicago.   Upon launching its second fund, Corazon added Phil Schwarz, the former CMO of Tinder, where he was responsible for growth, brand and retention marketing on a global basis. Previously, Phil was Head of Growth Initiatives at Match Group and co-founder of the Kaplan/Techstars EdTech accelerator.  Together, Corazon’s principals have founded six companies through to four exits, served as CEOs of companies worth over $5 billion (including taking a company public), executed over $1 billion in acquisitions, invested in excess of $300 million in private companies, and held over 30 board seats.

Corazon Capital

Think Big. Move Fast - Venture capital Firm - We create partnerships with tech entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of creation.

WinstonVenture

TriplePoint Ventures is a venture capital firm that finances seed and early stage investments of life sciences and technology sectors.

TriplePoint Ventures

Menlo Ventures provides capital for multi-stage consumer, enterprise, and life sciences technology companies. Since 1976, the firm’s market-driven analysis has led to the identification of opportunities and successful investments in innovative markets. Notable areas of investment include Marketplaces (Uber, Rover.com, Poshmark); Consumer Services (Tumblr, Betterment, Roku, Siri); Dev/Ops (Harness, Edge Delta, Fire hydrant); SaaS (Carta, ScoutRFP, Qualia, Benchling, Everlaw); Fintech (Betterment, Bluevine, Chime); Cybersecurity (Cavium, IronPort, BitSight, Abnormal, StackRox); and Life Sciences Technology (Synthego, Cofactor Genomics, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, 3T Biosciences). Menlo’s portfolio includes more than 70 public companies, and more than 100 mergers and acquisitions, with $5 billion under management. The firm is currently investing in Menlo Ventures XV, a $500 million early-stage fund, as well as its $500 million Inflection Fund, which targets early-growth investments.

Menlo Ventures

The R/GA Accelerator is a three-month, immersive, mentor-driven program for early-stage startups that are not only innovating products, services, and experiences, but also exploring new business models that exploit emerging technology.  We amplify investment capital by leveraging the agency’s in-house teams of world-class designers, brand strategists, and creative technologists as well as the agency’s mentor network of global brand leaders.  The combination of investment capital, creative capital, and our global network gives our start-up partners an ''unfair advantage'' as they go to market and scale.

R/GA Accelerator

New Enterprise Associates is a prominent venture capital firm focusing on investments in technology and healthcare startups. They help entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors, and geographies. With over $19 billion in cumulative committed capital since the firm’s founding in 1977, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from the seed stage through the IPO. The firm's long track record of successful investing includes more than 210 portfolio company IPOs and more than 360 acquisitions.

New Enterprise Associates

CPP Investments's mandate is to invest in the best interests of Canada Pension Plan contributors and beneficiaries and to maximize investment returns without undue risk of loss. CPP Investments is a professional investment management organization that invests the assets of the Canada Pension Plan, not currently needed to pay pension, disability, and survivor benefits.

CPP Investments

SineWave Ventures provides early-stage investment capital to technology companies across commercial and public sectors. The firm aims to deliver superior returns to its limited partners regardless of macro conditions or competitive landscape. It focuses on entrepreneurs that develop solutions to challenging problems common to both Fortune 500 corporations and government enterprises. SineWave Ventures was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Washington, District of Columbia.

SineWave Ventures

NextEquity Partners makes mid-late stage private investments in consumer and enterprise technology companies with $10-50M+ revenue. Founded in 2015, NextEquity is led by senior executives from Apple (former Apple Chief Software Officer Avie Tevanian and former Apple CFO Fred Anderson) and private equity execs from Elevation Partners (Adam Hopkins, Rami Reyes) who have been investing together for over 10 years in leading companies such as Facebook, Yelp, MarketShare, Sonos, Airbnb, The RealReal, Masterclass, Ring, Venafi, and SentinelOne. The team brings a unique combination of Apple DNA, Silicon Valley relationships, and private equity discipline to mid-late stage tech investing.

NextEquity Partners

Numeta Capital is a software-focused private equity firm based in Los Angeles, CA.  We focus on partnering with growth-stage B2B software companies by investing $10mm to $100mm in private transactions ranging from buyouts, recaps, minority growth investments, and structured equity transactions.  Our flexible investment mandate, dedicated operating resources, and single focus on B2B software and technology-enabled businesses make us a stronger partner.

Numeta Capital

Clarifai

Clarifai is a leading, full-lifecycle deep learning AI platform for computer vision, natural language processing, and audio recognition. We help organizations transform unstructured images, video, text, and audio data into structured data at a significantly faster and more accurate rate than humans would be able to do on their own. Founded in 2013 by Matt Zeiler, Ph.D. Clarifai has been a market leader in AI since winning the top five places in image classification at the 2013 ImageNet Challenge. Clarifai continues to grow with employees remotely based throughout the United States, Canada, Estonia, Argentina & India.

<div><p>Clarifai AI, founded by machine learning expert Matthew Zeiler, specializes in visual-recognition artificial intelligence systems that offer image recognition, object detection, visual searches, etc. The company provides facial recognition systems for the hospitality, retail, and media sectors for identifying VIP/repeat customers, instant payment options, access control, and more. Clarifai&rsquo;s APIs and SDKs can be used in the cloud or on-premises. The company was named the leader among computer vision platforms by Forrester Research in 2019. Clarifai AI is one of the most-funded facial recognition startups, which has raised USD 100 million as of October 2021.</p></div>

Facial recognition delivers incredible convenience to consumers, as well as serious risks.

Facial Recognition

Clarifai Joins the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Open Research Commons to Advance AI Innovation

<div>
  <p>
    Clarifai AI, founded by machine learning expert Matthew Zeiler, specializes in visual-recognition artificial intelligence systems that offer image recognition, object detection, visual searches, etc. The company provides facial recognition systems for the hospitality, retail, and media sectors for identifying VIP/repeat customers, instant payment options, access control, and more. Clarifai&rsquo;s APIs and SDKs can be used in the cloud or on-premises. The company was named the leader among computer vision platforms by Forrester Research in 2019. Clarifai AI is one of the most-funded facial recognition startups, which has raised USD 100 million as of October 2021.
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    Founded in Spain, FacePhi offers a wide range of facial recognition identity authentication solutions for transaction approval and digital onboarding. FacePhi&rsquo;s Selphi software allows the user to conduct ID authentication by using a selfie. The selfie is encrypted and sent to the bank&rsquo;s database to be used in payee authentication. The encryptions ensure the user's privacy as the full image is not sent to the bank. The company&rsquo;s revenue increased by around 143% during the first half of 2020 (compared to the same period in 2019) on account of agreements with 10 new clients, compared to 13 new customers during 2019 (full year), indicating the growth potential of the company.
  </p>
  <p>
    In May 2021, FacePhi partnered with Revelock, a Spanish fraud detection company, to provide comprehensive identity verification and fraud prevention solutions for financial institutions. In February 2022, the company partnered with software company Oracle Cloud Marketplace, for the latter to work as a distributor for FacePhi's digital onboarding and facial recognition solutions. In November 2021, the company also partnered with airport operator Aena to offer identity verification for passengers and employees at a price of USD 1.7 million for four years. With the aim of expanding presence in the LATAM region, FacePhi established a regional office in Uruguay in March 2022, followed by an agreement with 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates?industryIds=16">
      Hites,
    </a>
     a Chilean department store, to use remote selfie onboarding technology to let Hites&rsquo; customers apply for credit cards online. In May 2022, FacePhi opened another
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10796?industryIds=16">
       office in the UK
    </a>
     to serve Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) regions.
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Funding and financials</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    During the fiscal year 2022, FacePhi recorded net revenues of EUR 2.2 million ( ~USD 2.3 million), growing 69% YoY, and an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 4.3 million ( ~USD 4.6 million), unchanged from the previous year.
  </p>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


FacePhi

<p><span>Headquartered in the Netherlands, Sightcorp is an AI spin-off from the University of Amsterdam that develops patented proprietary AI Software solutions for mobile apps, including face detection (detect multiple faces in an image), emotion analysis, crowd demographics, and attention analytics. The main target markets of the company include retail, advertising, hospitality, and digital signage.</span></p><p><span>In January 2022, Sightcorp was </span><a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7828?industryIds=16"><span>acquired by Raydiant </span></a><span>, a provider of an in-location experience management platform, to jointly develop solutions for personalized on-screen, in-location experiences targeting retailers, restaurants, etc. Sightcorp expects to open offices in Lithuania and London in 2022 and to grow its European team from 20 to 100. Raydiant is also hiring across the US and internationally to accompany Sightcorp’s new offices.</span></p>

Sightcorp

<div>
  <p>
    Okaya offers a mobile app that aims to understand users&rsquo; wellbeing by using a combination of facial recognition technology, biometrics analysis (such as heart rate, weight, etc.), and machine learning. Okaya&rsquo;s facial recognition algorithm, developed in-house, analyses facial features obtained from a 15-second video recording where up to 30 frames are captured in a second. This data is evaluated along with other biometrics to determine a person&rsquo;s level of fatigue. The product claims to help create strong work teams and a robust work environment allowing the identification of areas where improvement is required.
  </p>
</div>


Okaya

<div>
  <p>
    Facetec offers a 3D face authentication software called ZoOm capable of high-performance liveness detection (verification of whether facial features captured are from a living subject). The software can work on smart mobile devices and webcams. The company also has patented technology to generate a 3D face map using a video selfie recorded even with a 2D camera. In September 2019, Facetec improved its product by embedding an age-estimation tool. Even though selfie-based authentication has become commonplace, many of them uses 2D facial mapping which makes it are vulnerable to spoofing attacks (trying to obtain access illegitimately by reproducing a person's face using images, masks, mannequins etc.) due to use of 2D mapping of facial features. FaceTec's technology is superior to others as it allows to create a 3D map of the face even with a normal 2D camera. While most other 3D face mapping requires designated hardware components, FaceTec's technology eliminates this requirement. Hence, it does not require app developers to rely on device manufacturers to incorporate additional hardware to use ZoOm. The company claims its product is one of the few companies to be certified in level 1 and 2 in iBeta Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) testing directed by an ISO standard. The software can detect digital and physical 'spoof artifacts' such as high-resolution photos and videos, masks and mannequins. FaceTec has over 100 customers across various verticals with an installed base of over 10 billion smart devices. ZoOm targets a wide range of markets ranging from banking, e-commerce, healthcare, insurance, e-voting, attendance, and government. Majority of FaceTec's customers are currently government and financial institutions.
  </p>
</div>


FaceTec, Inc.

<div>
  <p>
    FaceFirst offers facial recognition solutions mainly for access control as well as for identity authentication and real-time security. It focuses on retailers, airports, casinos, banks, as well as music and gaming events. The company also offers a mobile app (for iOS and Android) for facial recognition on the go. FaceFirst&rsquo;s facial recognition tool is mainly aimed at the retail segment, which accounts for around 50% of its business. FaceFirst&rsquo;s patented retail security platform can identify any known shoplifters or forbidden employees attempting to enter the store. Its products can be integrated with existing retail systems. 
  </p>
  <p>
    The company also introduced Mask-ID in November 2018, which instantly blurs identified faces without compromising accuracy. Additionally, the retail security platform allows its users to access the company&rsquo;s database of retail criminals, enabling them to include any individuals banned by the company itself. FaceFirst is one of the companies to work with lawmakers to help regulate the industry.
  </p>
</div>


FaceFirst

Companies that are developing facial recognition technology to suggest tags for photos uploaded on the platform, typically social media.

Companies that provide facial recognition technology for contactless and fast-payment gateways.

Companies providing tools to identify VIP customers and repeat customers by using facial recognition.

Companies that provide technology to monitor physical access to offices, retail stores, and residences as well as access to electronic devices, such as mobile phones and laptops, using facial recognition.

Companies providing facial recognition technology to identify people from live and recorded videos.

Companies that provide facial recognition technology to police and government agencies to identify criminals, protestors, unauthorized overstayers in the country, and departing passengers.

Facial recognition is a type of biometrics used to verify individuals

Used in smart city applications for access control

Facial recognition technology is built on ML models for training data

Clarifai

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