Spot Technologies, an El Salvador-based artificial intelligence startup, raised $2 million in funding. The corporate, with operations in Chile, is developing cloud technology that turns cameras in retail and logistics locations into an intelligent system tracking behavior evaluation and security.
An investor group including Femsa Ventures, Bridge Latam, Daedalus, Kuiper and Casque participated within the round.
Julio Abrego, co-founder and CEO, and his team began the corporate in 2018 to develop models, algorithms and modules for computer vision to reinforce the video surveillance industry, Abrego told TechCrunch via email.
Spot’s flagship product, VisionX, taps into deep learning and computer vision technologies to research consumer and theft behaviors. It then provides advanced capabilities, including gender and age evaluation, people counting, detection in undesignated areas, identification of crowd formations and evaluation of areas of interest.
Abrego considers firms including SenseTime, BriefCam, AdMobilize and DeepView as competitors within the space. Nevertheless, he says Spot’s VisionX tech differs from them in a number of ways. One is modular integration and flexibility to permit for flexible integration of video evaluation modules — what Abrego likened to assembling Lego pieces. One other is detection.
“Spot focuses on transforming existing cameras in supermarkets into advanced tools for detecting consumer behaviors and stopping thefts,” Abrego said. “This dual functionality of security and consumer behavior evaluation is exclusive and provides significant added value to customers.”
With the brand new capital, Spot intends to speculate in the event of VisionX 2.0, scheduled for launch this yr. It’ll include detecting minor thefts, thefts in self-checkout areas, violent actions and evaluation of shopping patterns.
One among Spot’s big customers is Walmart, which has deployed VisionX into 450 of its stores and distribution centers in Chile to, amongst those other things, optimize dispatch processes through the counting and tracking of pallets.
Along with Chile, Walmart has plans to implement the VisionX technology in its operations in Mexico in 2024. Spot can be talking with Oxxo, a Mexico-based chain of convenience stores, to integrate VisionX in its greater than 21,000 stores across Latin America.
“We’ve integrated latest functionalities into our SaaS platform, equivalent to theft detection and human behavior detection,” Abrego said. “Similarly, by way of talent acquisition, we now have grown from having nine programmers to 30, and we now have plans in our roadmap to expand to 50. This growth is supported by high-level clients, like Walmart and Mercado Libre.”
