VizioSense, a leader in privacy-centric visual AI solutions, announces a €1.4 million funding round to accelerate the deployment of its innovative solutions. This seed round was led by startup studio Alacrité France, BeAngels, a European business angel network, and Canadian fund Wesley Clover International, funded by Sir Terry Matthews, a well-known Canadian business leader and tech innovator. Several private French and international investors also participated in the funding round.

VizioSense develops Edge-AI-based optical sensors to detect, count, track, and segment people and object movements in real-time. By processing images locally on the sensor rather than in the cloud, VizioSense solutions are designed to protect individuals' privacy without compromising data accuracy.

With VizioPark, the company’s pioneering smart parking solution, VizioSense leverages AI features embedded in the sensor to obtain real-time information on parking occupancy rates and the duration of parking for each spot. Distributed through an international network of integration partners, VizioPark targets cities and municipalities promoting sustainable urban mobility, infrastructure managers (public parking lots or on-street parking, park-and-ride facilities, airports, shopping malls, etc.), and transport operators. The solution has already won over customers such as the cities of Pétange and Ettelbruck, while also drawing the interest of organizations like CFL (Luxembourg National Railway Company), which is currently testing VizioPark. These customers and organizations are looking to address traffic flow, CO2 emission reduction, and air quality improvement challenges by considering the adoption of VizioPark for their parking facilities.

This seed phase will enable VizioSense to develop its solutions and launch VizioCount, a real-time people and vehicle counting solution for improved urban mobility planning and management, in June 2023. The funds raised will help strengthen the VizioSense team, with the addition of deep-learning and computer vision researchers and engineers.

"VizioSense puts ethical AI at the core of its solutions. We are honored by the support of our investor partners, which will allow us to push the boundaries of computer vision to create innovative, high-performance, and privacy-respecting applications", said Maxime Schacht, co-founder and CEO of VizioSense.

Maxime Schacht, an IoT expert with experience at Samsung Electronics and Sigfox, and Amine Bourki, a computer vision and AI researcher co-founded VizioSense in 2022. Based at Alacrité France in Lille and Station F in Paris, the growing VizioSense team has also secured the exclusive Deeptech grant from the French Public Investment Bank, which recognizes breakthrough technology innovation.

Quotes:

"We are convinced of the transformative potential of artificial intelligence for smart cities, buildings, and industries, and we are proud to support high-impact projects like VizioSense, which provides responsible and innovative solutions to tackle the challenges of our time." Laurent Rouach, President of LuxPropTech and Member of BeAngels, the European business angel network

“The VizioPark sensor is the best performing on the market. At Rms.lu, we have tested numerous smart-parking solutions to address the socio-economic challenges of our clients. VizioPark is a highly accurate sensor, even in low-light environments, and can cover up to 125 parking spaces. In my opinion, it is the most reliable and has the best price-to-precision ratio on the market." Carlo Posing, Integrator Partner and CEO of RMS.lu

"The potential of AI-based visual recognition solutions is enormous, all around the world. I fully support VizioSense, whose research and development efforts in computer vision follow both a scientific and responsible approach." Yung Kim, VizioSense board member and former President of Korea Telecom