With $22 million Worth of New Funding, Commercial Application of Face Recognition to be Accelerated by Startup Face++

Eileen McNulty · November 18, 2014

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Face++, a Beijing-based startup who provide face recognition technology on the cloud, recently bagged $22 million worth of series B funding from Quiming Ventures and Series A investor Innovation Works. The round reportedly values the company at $100 million and was raised from Legend Star, the incubation program under Lenovo.

The face recognition technology Face++ is a new vision platform built by Megvii Inc. Aiming at providing compact, powerful, and cross-platform vision service. Face++ uses the cutting-edge technology of computer vision and data mining to provide 3 core vision services (Detection, Recognition, and Analysis). With the service and huge database of celebrities from Face++, the developers can apply the face technology into their own websites, mobile Apps, and smart TVs, enhancing the user experience.

Face++ services have basic and enterprise versions. Basic Face++ service is API-based. Enterprise version has a much better accuracy and system performance. In addition, offline SDK and customized cloud service are available for enterprise partners. Their SDK packages cover comprehensive platforms (including ios, Android, Linux, and Windows). Their enterprise partners include Lenovo, 360, Meitu and Camera360.

The startup plans to increase the commercial application of its face recognition technology with the new funding, mainly from two perspectives.

1) Application in Financial Services: Financial services now have the option to use facial biometric data as a security feature, making the security of their customer’s accounts watertight.Face++ has already announced a partnership with Ant Financial, (Alibaba’s finance branch, responsible for Alipay) in this sector, as well as several commercial banks.

2) Camera data + IFTTT model: By fusing together camera data and the IFTTT service, businesses can set the technology to execute certain pre-defined functions when the cameras register a certain client. In retail for example, the camera would be able to alert staff about the arrival of a VIP client, who could then tailor and customise services accordingly.

Sources state that the face recognition tech is integrated into more than 14,000 apps, covering over 40 million mobile devices per month.

The Author

Eileen McNulty

Eileen McNulty-Holmes is the Head of Content for Data Natives, Europe’s largest data science conference. For the past ten years, they have written, edited and strategised for companies and publications spanning tech, arts and culture. With a core focus in journalism and content, Eileen has also spoken at conferences, organised literary and art events, mentored others in journalism, and had their fiction and essays published in a range of publications. They are passionate about amplifying marginalised voices in their field (particularly those from the LGBTQ community), AI, and dressing like it’s still the ’80s