Contxto – Last Tuesday, Chilean AI startup Odd Industries received a US$2 million investment, according to a recent press release. With new funding comes aspirations to fuel its development and expansion.
In Summary
Founded in March 2018, the company has already secured a significant amount of funding. While stakeholders remain undisclosed, we know all of them were Chilean investors.
The Santiago-born startup develops its own hardware and software solutions. It also provides these tools to companies from less-techie sectors. Odd Industries leverages its customers’ field data, artificial intelligence technology, and computer vision to create structured data from images. With this information comes tangible insights.
Thinking about international growth and its worldwide potential, the company wants to accelerate tech development. Also, Odd Industries hopes to increase its commercial capabilities with new funding.
In-Depth
Odd Industries is the creation of Leo Prieto, founder of media company FayerWayer and Betazeta. Prieto partnered with Christian Peña, CTO and co-founder, Pablo González, Chief of AI and co-founder, as well as Cristian Rojo, Chief of Hardware Operations and co-founder. Together they launched an enterprise determined to develop virtual tools for more analogous industries.
According to the website, Odd Industries help clients become more productive, efficient and sustainable. All the while, it aids partners in enhancing their financial, ecological and social impact. Specifically, the startup’s three products provide a holistic approach to industrial and construction processes.
Visual Progress empowers managers to observe real-time progress, turning images into data and insights. Secondly, Visual Access functions as a biometric system enabling clients to better monitor and control teams. Lastly, their advanced analytics/AI panel permits users to observe patterns, analyze data and make better-informed decisions.
“While the vast majority of the planet has been completely digitized, many of the world’s largest industries still function in an eminently analogous manner,” said Prieto.
“The main impact of this is that these mega-industries haven’t been able to transform themselves into data-oriented organizations precisely because they do not have digital assets to do advanced analysis to improve their productivity, impact and reduce risks. This capital injection validates the demonstrated reach of our technological solution that is solving a need on a global scale.”
“In recent years, computer vision technologies have made important advances to the point of surpassing humans in their accuracy,” said Peña. “This investment will allow us to further expand the possibilities that deliver these technologies using them in solutions that will undoubtedly impact a wide variety of industries. “
International and technologically advanced-markets such as China, the U.S. and Europe have already demonstrated interests in working with the company. Contrary to what most Latin American startups do, the next step for the founders is to expand to other continents.
Nonetheless, the startup must solidify and strengthen itself in the Chilean market. With this goal in mind, the company’s focus is to expand its technical and commercial capabilities to address growth.
-VC
