Polygram is a photo-sharing social network that uses facial-detection AI to surface viewers' emotional reactions to shared photos. Its core technology relies on a convolutional neural network that maps facial movements to emotions with roughly 20 milliseconds of lag, showing emoji reactions and audience tallies by geography and demographics. The app offers private messages with face-triggered emoji responses, ephemeral and permanent posts, augmented-reality beautification filters, and a "wipe-to-reveal" anti-screenshot feature. The company emphasizes a "white glove" influencer strategy, employing full-time staff to build custom features for creators and encouraging influencers to use Polygram to A/B test content. Polygram raised $2.1 million in seed funding and launched an iOS app as it attempts to compete with Instagram and Snapchat. The article notes the startup faces a tough climb rebuilding social graphs and has limited funding for traditional marketing; its features may be copied by or lead to acquisition by larger platforms.

Total raised

$2M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Aug 2017