VisionLabs develops biometric identification technologies—face, voice, and retina—that are used in banking and other applications. The company will partner with Sberbank to build a biometric ID system to be deployed to the bank’s customers following pilots. Sberbank, a state-owned Russian bank, and Sistema VC invested in the company, with Sberbank acquiring a 25.07% stake. VisionLabs will use the funding to pursue international expansion in Europe, the US, and Asia, and the deal allows for potential future involvement by an international strategic investor. The company is now headquartered in Amsterdam and, according to Sberbank leadership, already occupies a large share of the banking biometrics market in Russia and the CIS. VisionLabs previously raised $5.5 million from Sistema VC last year. VisionLabs builds facial-recognition and computer-vision software, including the Luna package for instant customer verification from photos or video and Face_IS for retailer personalization. The company was founded in 2012 and is a resident of the Skolkovo tech hub near Moscow. Luna targets banks and retail chains but the startup cites potential applications in ad personalization, IoT user identification, medicine, transportation, and virtual/augmented reality. VisionLabs has collaborated with Facebook and Google on an open-source computer vision platform (they provided modest funding) and was selected for Intel/Cisco/Deutsche Telekom’s ChallengeUp! accelerator. The company received seed-stage support from the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF).

Total raised

$6M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Jul 2016