The company, which also operates a development center in Haifa, develops artificial intelligence for the eye scanning market
Blink Technologies, which develops artificial intelligence for the eye scanning market (EYE TRACKING) announced the raising of $14 million in an initial fundraising round led by INcapital Ventures and in which six other private investors, Geffen Capital and its seed investors, Trilogy, Eldridge, Cervin Ventures and Elysian Park participated . This round comes after the Seed fundraising round that took place in April 2018. Together, the two rounds brought the total investments in Blink to the amount of 24 million dollars. The company has a development center in Haifa that employs about 25 artificial intelligence developers and research associates.
Blink's vision is to redefine our interaction with the digital world by using a human gaze. Humanity is always looking for new ways to interact with screens that go beyond traditional physical contact. Since the company's technology, which also operates a development center in Haifa, develops artificial intelligence for the eye scanning market will be a standard basis in our developing world, so the development of a faster and more natural way to communicate with an increasing number of smart/intelligent devices in many industries is essential. The company has large and diverse clients and business collaborations that include, among others, Samsung, Microsoft, Shamir Optica, Acer and more.
"We are very happy about this opportunity. Blink's team is an experienced team that lives up to the predictions and milestones they set for themselves. Blink's ability to provide easy-to-implement software solutions in the field of eye scanning is going to win the cards in the growing market," she said Nati Neshman, managing partner at INcapital.
"We are changing the field of eye scanning from end to end and offer smart software solutions based on artificial intelligence. We are already working with the largest companies in the world in order to simplify and enable digital user experiences on different devices and different operating systems," says Oren Yogev, CEO and co-founder of Blink. "Humanity is moving towards a closer connection to digital platforms based on visual sensing and my company is responsible for leading a series of revolutionary user experiences in the hybrid world known as the Metaverse." As you remember, Oren Yogev is also responsible for leading the largest exit in Israeli sports tech about five years ago as CEO and co-founder of Ripley Technologies. The company was sold to Intel for 180 million dollars under his leadership together with the brothers Mathieu and Aviv Shapira "Our products at Blink already today replace the mouse, the wireless remote control and later will be integrated in the next generation of the touch screen". Yogev added.
Combining eye scanning with XNUMXD technology allows Blink to redesign even the way we experience traditional display tools. This is by giving the possibility to produce a XNUMXD environment without the need for special glasses or a head-mounted display (HMD). "This technology will be part of our daily life," explains the co-founder and VP of Technology of Blink, Gilad Drozdov. "In the future woven before our eyes, the displays will be adapted to the user and will understand his intentions in a large variety of interactions in our lives."
"The cars, operating rooms, mobile devices, and augmented reality systems will all make use of the physiological understanding of the eye and will be able to respond with the help of the operating systems that will undergo an upgrade to the content in gaze-guided interaction." added
Today, Blink helps large clients in a long list of fields, including: XNUMXD screens, optometry, advertising and direction signs, education using XNUMXD display tools, accessibility assistance for the physically disabled and businesses using non-contact technology-based positions and online applications. These applications use this technology to allow their customers to choose through a glance, which will eliminate the need for physical contact in the complex environment created by the Corona epidemic.
The capital raised by Blink will be used for product development and hiring more employees. The company plans to double its workforce to 60 people and has begun a massive recruitment of talent to its sales teams in the United States and Asia, and the Israeli development teams in Haifa.
Blink It is the first startup company to develop stable and non-invasive eye monitoring technology that does not require specially designed hardware. The technology can use the built-in camera that already exists in the device.
The solution developed by the company combines mathematical models of the eye with a machine learning architecture adapted to the user. With the power of the algorithms developed by the company for monitoring different angles of the user's head and eyes, the condition of the eye, its position and the direction on which the eyes are fixed as recorded by the camera.
