Tel Avis-based facial recognition startup AnyVisio raises $43M to meet the growing demand for its unified visual intelligence platform

We wrote about AnyVision back in January 2019 after the AI-based visual intelligence software startup announced new funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Qualcomm Ventures to accelerate growth. AnyVision is an AI design and development company that specializes in face, object, and human recognition in mass crowd events.

Yesterday, the Tel Aviv, Israel-based AnyVision announced it has raised $43 million to scale its Touchless Access Control and Remote Authentication products at a time when demand for innovative technologies that help companies meet the challenges of the new reality is soaring.

Founded in 2015 by Eylon Etshtein, AnyVision’s solutions are built to function on any sensor, with any resolution, and are proven to operate in real-time and in real-world scenarios. Through seamless integration and plug and play technology, AnyVision enables any camera to smarter by, indexing and analyzing everything the sensor sees.

AnyVision’s touchless access control capability utilizes facial recognition to identify people as they approach a physical point of entry. The system initiates the authentication process when the individual is three meters away from the door in question. That door opens as soon as that person’s identity is verified, allowing them to enter a space without slowing down or interacting with doorknobs, terminals, or other shared touchpoints.

The startup has since exponential growth since we last wrote about them. However, AnyVision is not without controversy. Early this year, Microsoft announced it was ending its investments in the facial recognition startup after AnyVision was accused of helping the Israeli government surveil the West Bank.

In an announcement on the website of the company’s M12 venture arm, Microsoft said it is divesting from AnyVision and will no longer make minority investments in any facial recognition firms. “For Microsoft, the audit process reinforced the challenges of being a minority investor in a company that sells sensitive technology, since such investments do not generally allow for the level of oversight or control that Microsoft exercises over the use of its own technology.”

“Facial authentication is a core technology for enabling frictionless, intelligent operations,” said AnyVision CEO Eylon Etshtein. “We offer the most accurate, enterprise-grade solution in the market today to help our customers create safer, seamless experiences for people returning to work and by providing better, faster access to remote services on personal devices. With this additional funding, AnyVision will accelerate the delivery of these critical capabilities for businesses that are reimagining the way people access physical spaces and virtual services, both now and beyond the current crisis.”

The company sees significant growth opportunities for Touchless Access Control across all verticals within organizations that host large numbers of people in shared spaces, such as corporate real estate, banking, and financial services, manufacturing, and hospitality.

Many organizations that provide security services on personal devices have already deployed Remote Authentication, and AnyVision reports strong demand for its software to easily onboard and authenticate new and returning users of banking, travel, healthcare, and online gaming services in particular.

“What sets AnyVision apart is that we offer unrivaled accuracy, performance, and privacy protection in a unified visual intelligence platform that’s built for scale,” said AnyVision Chief Operating Officer Alex Zilberman.

Mr. Zilberman added: “Our core algorithm is trained on the most diverse data sets in the most challenging, real-world conditions and delivers the most accurate recognition in the industry, with or without masks. More than that, our technology was engineered to protect individual privacy and eliminate risk from data breaches by storing only a mathematical vector of a person’s face, making it impossible to trace back to a users’ identity. That’s a combination that no other vendor in the computer vision space can match.”