Global cloud surveillance company Eagle Eye Networks acquires AI startup Uncanny Vision 

Cloud video surveillance company Eagle Eye Networks on Thursday said it acquired Bengaluru-based AI surveillance startup Uncanny Vision, a 2018 YourStory Tech30 startup. 

The deal brings advanced AI technology to Eagle Eye’s cloud video surveillance platform and includes R&D capabilities, engineering talent, and a new regional office in India. 

Austin, Texas-based Eagle Eye Networks will fold Uncanny Vision into its operations and retain all 60 employees. It will expand the latter’s Bengaluru office, which primarily has employees with technical and engineering expertise, to include sales and administrative staff to support its India operations. 

At present, Eagle Eye Networks has offices in Bengaluru, Tokyo, and Amsterdam. 

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Speaking on the acquisition to YourStory, Dean Drako, CEO, Eagle Eye Networks, and a notable American entrepreneur, said, 

“In all of my experience, I have never met a team like that of Uncanny Vision. I have interacted with hundreds of AI, vision, and surveillance companies in the last five years, and none of them have the depth of understanding of applying AI to hardware as the Uncanny Vision team. The Uncanny team understands the full stack, the hardware, operating system, and the software that goes on top of it for the customer.” 

Uncanny Vision co-founders Ranjith Parakkal and Navaneethan Sundaramoorthy started as low-level hardware DSP developers and took time to understand the space and its needs. 

With Uncanny Vision’s AI technology added to the Eagle Eye platform, the latter is accelerating its plans announced in November 2020 to dramatically reshape video surveillance and improve safety, security, operations, and customer services for businesses around the world.

The perfect fit 

In a conversation with YourStory, Ranjith, Founder and CEO, Uncanny Vision, said, 

“The key thing that Eagle Eye brings is how to manage the video from the camera and storing and managing it all on the cloud across devices. We realise how tricky it is, and when we started interacting with Eagle Eye and Dean, we saw complete synergies and saw how we could grow it. I think this is the perfect marriage of key pieces of technology.” 

Eagle Eye operates on open APIs, and the team has seen several analytics companies integrated with the company's APIs. 

“We benchmarked Uncanny with other solutions, and they were the best. The next steps are to incorporate the Uncanny AI technology into our VMS. We are investing in growing it stronger, and we are investing in an Eagle Eye India office. We will be selling the Eagle Eye cloud video management system to 3,000 odd resellers across the globe in 90 countries, including India,” Dean said. 

Uncanny Vision’s award-winning AI is used in applications, such as smart parking, gate security, toll automation, smart cities, ATM monitoring, worker safety, retail analytics, and perimeter security. 

The startup also has sophisticated model training capabilities, which are essential for the deployment and utilisation of artificial intelligence in the video. 

Navaneethan, Co-founder and CMO, Uncanny Vision, said, “We are excited about the global scale and large sales network of Eagle Eye Networks, where we can bring our proven AI technology. We are excited about the opportunity to support the larger customer base together with Eagle Eye Networks.”