British AI-video intelligence startup Pimloc raises €1.5 million to protect visual data
London-based startup Pimloc, a visual privacy and security company, has closed a seed funding round of approx. €1.5 million, led by Amadeus Capital Partners with participation from Speedinvest and existing shareholders.
Founded in 2016, Pimloc specialises in deep learning systems for security video and diverse image collections. Pimloc’s technology powers products that enable private businesses and public organisations to protect sensitive or personal visual data, to maintain safe online environments and to manage video security footage.
Pimloc’s deep learning platform powers two products: Pholio (a specialist search and discovery platform for large image and video collections and live streams), and Secure Redact (a data privacy platform for the anonymisation of personal data in video). These products are being deployed within a range of sectors including mobility, insurance, entertainment, broadcasting and law enforcement.
Pimloc was born out of co-founders Simon Randall and James Leigh’s pioneering work in autonomous intelligent camera systems. They recognised a critical need for software that could make sense of the growing streams of visual data being captured and preserve the privacy of people in front of the lens. By incorporating the latest AI technologies, Pimloc is able to provide products for the specialist classification of large-scale visual data and tools that allow businesses to dynamically train their systems around specific content areas.
Simon Randall, CEO, said, “Video is being captured more often, by more devices and in more locations than ever before. Historically much of this footage has resided with security officers but now other business functions want to extract valuable data from this content. How this data is managed and shared is raising critical legal and ethical questions for data privacy. The protection of personal data needs to be designed into visual security and analytics systems by default to protect individuals from the misuse of face recognition and other technologies.”
“Video files are typically large in size and present unique challenges of scale and security for access, processing, review and supply compared to other data. Without specialist automation data security is impossible to manage at any scale. Our products are currently being used in the preparation of video evidence, the anonymisation of visual data for analytics and for compliance with GDPR and other data protection legislation.”
Alex van Someren, Managing Partner, Amadeus Capital Partners, commented, “There is a critical need for privacy by design and large-scale solutions, as video grows as a data source for mobility, insurance, commerce and smart cities, while our reliance on video for remote working increases. We are very excited about the potential of Pimloc’s products to meet this challenge.
Rick Hao, Principal, Speedinvest, added, “Consumers around the world are rightfully concerned with how enterprises are handling the growing volume of visual data being captured 24/7. We believe Pimloc has developed an industry leading approach to visual security and privacy that will allow businesses and governments to manage the usage of visual data whilst protecting consumers. We are excited to support their vision as they expand into the wider Enterprise and SaaS markets.”
