If one works in the technology industry, it’s likely one has been hearing about recent advancements in AI-based video analysis for years now. The tech has seemingly hit its stride, with new services and applications continually popping up to expand and support the ecosystem. For an example, one really has to look no further than Amazon Rekognition, which leverages Machine Learning (ML) to make it easy to identify things like objects, people, or text within videos and images.
AI developments
Outside of the technology industry, however, existing enterprises aren’t always set up to take advantage of the latest AI developments. Whether it’s because they have older hardware that doesn’t integrate with newer tech, or they just don’t have the resources or right people on staff to manage integrations; there is often a gap that makes it difficult to leverage the latest and greatest in video AI. This divide is just where start-up VXG operates.
Founded in 2016, VXG was built to be that middle layer between existing enterprises and the newest AI-based video analysis services, like Rekognition, YOLO, Azure, Google, and others. Companies can easily link their existing and new network of cameras to VXG’s platform and receive automated analysis at scale, effectively making any camera a smart camera.
AI solutions accessible and scalable
VXG was founded to be the bridge that connects the two worlds to make AI solutions accessible and scalable"
As co-founder and CEO Yaro Lisitsyn puts it, “Having worked with both video surveillance and artificial intelligence for years, it became evident that there was a growing gap between the two industries. VXG was founded to be the bridge that connects the two worlds to make AI solutions accessible and scalable.”
The Toronto-based team’s customers currently skew towards the retail space, where cameras have long been deployed to record activity, with most enterprises slowly taking that next step to automate analysis. Selling directly to retailers, as well as business insights and video AI companies - VXG enables clients to easily extract previously inaccessible data/information from images or video feeds, such as foot traffic data and conversion statistics.
Open to all hardware and AI platforms
Being open on both the hardware and AI sides separates VXG from the other VSaaS and VMS companies. While partnering with major camera manufacturers, users receive unmatched flexibility and support, and are not locked into contracts with set cameras and AI vendors.
But really the differentiator for VXG is the scale that they’re able to operate at, in no small part thanks to AWS as an infrastructure provider. Per Lisitsyn, “There are other options on the market that enable AI for video, but they only work for maybe 100 or 1,000 cameras. At VXG we are approaching this from an enterprise and commercial standpoint, where camera networks span into the tens or hundreds of thousands. That’s why we are really happy to be working with AWS by leveraging Rekognition as an AI engine, as well as hosting our infrastructure with a provider that is built to handle that level of scale.”
Markets
Looking ahead, VXG sees a lot of opportunity to expand into new markets, such as real estate, education and building/operations management. Longer term, there will applications within the expanding world of smart cities, as local governments look to better understand how to make things run more efficiently.