brighter AI raises a Series A round led by Armilar

brighter AI raises a Series A round led by new investor Armilar Venture Partners to scale up its unique PrivacyTech solution for video and image data. Existing investors eCAPITAL and G+D Ventures also invested in this financing round.

‍2022-06-30‍

The state-of-the-art anonymization solution provided by brighter AI enables GDPR-compliant visual data analysis, which is essential to machine learning and AI innovation. Recent wins with customers like Segula show the great traction that brighter AI's solution was able to generate in the market.

‍"We have chosen brighter AI due to their scalable cloud platform that allows for fast and flexible anonymization of huge amounts of automotive data for autonomous driving/ADAS (Advanced driver-assistance system) development. Their full service offering including data handling is exactly what we have been looking for." (Daniel Scholz, Teamleader Electronics Development, Segula Technologies Experts GmbH).

Industries like Automotive but also Public Transport and Healthcare are sweet spot verticals for brighter AI’s software where massive volumes of image and video data are needed for AI/machine learning (ML) development or Analytics. brighter AI's unique positioning also makes it a highly attractive collaboration partner for industry giants like Siemens:

"brighter AI is one of those startups that tick all the boxes, great product, great delivery, unique technology and most importantly, wonderful people to work with. I look forward to a very fruitful collaborative engagement with them in the future” (Ian McGann, Director of Innovation, Siemens Digital Industry Software).

brighter AI’s Deep Natural Anonymization (DNAT) solution has received the European Privacy Seal (EuroPriSe), which is the only EU-wide, independent privacy seal for GDPR compliance and is highly acknowledged by many professionals in the data protection field.

"While there is a massive, and fast growing, amount of video and images being produced, the full use of this data has been significantly limited by evermore stringent privacy regulations. brighter AI’s deeply technical solution, which does not compromise privacy-enhancement vs data-richness preservation, is already today assisting its clients in developing solutions in the video analytics and AI / ML markets. We believe that brighter AI has the potential to unlock massive value at a global scale”, said José Guerreiro de Sousa, Partner at Armilar Venture Partners. He added: "We are very excited to have the opportunity to join existing shareholders and to support Marian Gläser, Tobias Stelzer and the whole team taking the company to the next level."

"We are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in privacy protection for video and image data with tremendous success. We achieved five new partnerships e.g., DXC and Siemens within the last 12 months and increased sales by a high two-figure percentage every quarter. The solid growth of the company is now accommodated by another strong partner. The entire team is looking forward to having Armilar Venture Partners by its side to scale the company to the next level” says Marian Gläser, Co-Founder/CEO of brighter AI

"We as existing investors are very pleased to welcome Armilar Venture Partners, a strong partner for the next phase of brighter AI. With certified GDPR-compliance and an unmatched speed and accuracy, brighter AI’s anonymization solution is well prepared for the rising customer demand worldwide” says Dirk Seewald, Partner at eCAPITAL. "As investors in the TrustTech environment we are eager to further support the growth of brighter AI, providing not only a unique video and image privacy technology to the market but also demonstrating European tech leadership in driving GDPR”, adds Michael Hochholzer, Managing Director of G+D Ventures.

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About brighter AI

brighter AI provides anonymization solutions based on state-of-the-art deep learning technology to protect every identity in public.

Cameras are the most powerful sensor for use cases such as autonomous driving, intelligent retail and smart cities. At the same time, privacy is a fundamental human right and increasing regulations restrict the usage of publicly-recorded images and videos. Therefore, brighter AI has developed Deep Natural Anonymization, which empowers companies to protect peoples' identities when using such data for advanced analytics and machine learning.

brighter AI was founded by Marian Gläser and Patrick Kern in 2017, first as a spin-off of the German tier-1 supplier HELLA. brighter AI is named "Europe‘s Hottest AI Startup" by Nvidia, won "The Spark - The German Digital Award" by Handelsblatt & McKinsey.

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About Armilar

Armilar Venture Partners is Portugal's leading VC funds manager. An independent VC with a history of more than 20 years, a high-performance track record and an international footprint, focusing on early-stage technology-based companies where data, digitisation and connectivity play a central role. Currently, Armilar's funds under management amount to about €300 million, deployed typically as lead investor in seed to early-stage deals in companies in Portugal, Europe and the USA. Our portfolio includes companies such as OutSystems (one of Europe’s most recent "unicorns”, the leading low-code development platform, where we are the only early-stage and the only European investor), Feedzai (a Forbes Fintech50 company applying AI to real-time payment fraud detection, where we were first investors in at the seed stage) and Codacy (automated code review tool and the winner of Web Summit 2014, where we were also the first money in). For more information please visit www.armilar.com.

The Armilar Venture Partners TechTransfer Fund is supported by InnovFin Equity, with the financial backing of the European Union under Horizon 2020 Financial Instruments and the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) set up under the Investment Plan for Europe. The purpose of EFSI is to help support financing and implementing productive investments in the European Union and to ensure increased access to financing. The fund is also co-financed by Fundo de Capital e Quase Capital (FC&QC), managed by Banco Português de Fomento, S.A.

Founded in 1999, eCAPITAL is an entrepreneur-led venture capital investor focusing on early- and growth-stage deep-tech companies with a positive impact on society. eCAPITAL is based in Germany and invests with its own funds with a total volume of over € 280 million in the areas of Sustainability, Enterprise Software, Cybersecurity, IoT and New Materials. In addition to financial resources, eCAPITAL offers its portfolio companies strategic support and access to an international network of entrepreneurs, scientists, investors and founders and was lead investor in various deep-tech companies such as sonnen, Novaled or Jedox, which were sold very successfully to international strategists or investors.

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‍About G+D Ventures

G+D Ventures is the Corporate Venture Capital arm of the Giesecke+Devrient Group and is headquartered in Munich, Germany. We are a theme-driven investor, financing early stage European startups, which safeguard and enhance trust in our society.

The team leverages its VC experience investing since 2001 to support portfolio companies with a core uniqueness: leveraging the worldwide network of G+D, Veridos and secunet Security Networks.