The Future of Spaces
By Bilal Zuberi
No, not SPACE…spaces. As in, industrial facilities, commercial real estate, oil & gas plants!
Over the last handful of years, some of the biggest advances in technology have been in the fields of computer vision, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics. When you combine all of these and apply them to some of the largest sectors in the economy, you get openspace.ai.
I am proud to announce that Lux Capital just led a seed round in OpenSpace. As part of the investment, I am joining the company’s board of directors.
While OpenSpace’s technology and offering are compelling enough on their own, what I’m most excited about is the people. The founding team, which originally met at MIT, has a proven track record in tech startups:
Jeevan Kalanithi was the co-founder and CEO of Sifteo. The company was bought by 3D Robotics, and Jeevan later became President. Lux invested in other companies in the drone-based imaging world and we got to know Jeevan through various industry connections. We were impressed by his depth of understanding of the technology and its potential to transform large markets, so when he was ready to make a change, we invited him to become our first EIR at Lux.
Philip DeCamp is a senior researcher in the computer vision space, and worked as a research scientist at MIT after completing his PhD. Check out some of his exciting work here.
Michael Fleischman was a co-founder of BlueFin Labs, which analyzed massive volumes of video data. The company was acquired by Twitter in one of the social media giant’s largest acquisitions. Michael was most recently advisor to Twitter’s CTO.
Last year Jeevan wrote this insightful post on the exponential increase in number of cameras per person in this world. At that time I was struck by the implications for society at large. There is also an enormous opportunity in the enterprise. The near future is a world surrounded by ubiquitous camera sensors. Their output will be analyzed with the latest in machine vision and deep learning (as evidenced by the work of numerous Lux-backed companies, including Clarifai, Hangar, Orbital Insight, Deep Sentinel, Matterport and others). Additionally, there is a next-level need to bring the right imaging sensors to the right locations.
OpenSpace is in stealth mode for now, and has begun testing its product with a few early customers. We wish we could say more, but for now, we can drop this hint: OpenSpace combines cameras, computer vision and graphics with a dash of robotics, to bring imaging into the field and deliver vast improvements in productivity, efficiency, and safety.
Now that OpenSpace has seed capital, it is recruiting for technical talent in AI, machine learning, robotics and computer vision, as well as software generalists. If you’re interested in defining the future of industrial and commercial spaces, join them!
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Our investment partners include: National Science Foundation, Foundation Capital, GoldCrest Investments, Sterling Capital, Box Group, Angellist, Comet Labs, and a set of amazing angel investors.
