Startup Spot AI Inc. has raised $31 million in new funding to help companies analyze footage from security cameras at their facilities.

The investment, which was announcement today, included contributions from more than half a dozen investors. Qualcomm Ventures was among the participants. The cash infusion brings the company’s total external financing to $93 million.

Spot AI sells a hardware appliance called the Intelligent Video Recorder, or IVP, that runs on an Nvidia Corp. graphics card. It can connect to security cameras in a facility such as a factory and automatically store images on built-in storage drives. According to Spot AI, IVR keeps videos for up to 90 days and can keep a backup copy in the cloud to protect against data loss.

The device comes optionally with cameras. Spot AI offers half a dozen models capable of capturing images indoors, outdoors and at night. Some cameras can also rotate their lens toward a point of interest and zoom in.

According to Spot AI, its IVR device includes software that automatically detects any camera malfunction. There are also artificial intelligence models that help users view collected images more easily.

Searching a video archive for specific events, such as a collision between two forklifts in a warehouse, can be time-consuming. The user must identify where an interesting event took place, when it occurred, and the camera that captured it. Spot AI claims its AI algorithms speed up the task by allowing users to search for clips with natural language prompts instead of manually sifting through footage.

The software also promises to save time in other ways. According to Spot AI, users can highlight an object or location in a video and configure its platform to automatically detect relevant events. A factory manager, for example, could highlight a section of the factory where forklifts cannot be used and ask Spot AI to detect any violations of the rule.

Against the backdrop of today’s funding announcement, Spot AI has expanded its suite of automation capabilities with a capability called Video AI Agents. It allows the company’s platform to not only spot events of interest, but also automatically take a user-defined action in response.

A manufacturer could use Video AI agents to detect a robotic arm malfunctioning and automatically shut it down. Construction companies, meanwhile, can configure the platform to detect when workers enter a building without safety helmets and activate an alarm. The feature also lends itself to various other tasks, such as generating daily reports on the number of vehicles entering a car wash.

Spot AI’s platform is used by 1,000 clients across 17 industries. The company claims to have processed billions of hours of footage for these clients since its launch in 2020.

Image: AI Spot