Huddly, a Norwegian vision technology company that builds intelligent cameras, has acquired the employees, intellectual property and select equipment of Norwegian AI company Epigram. The acquisition, which will result in tools, IP and all AI engineers moving over to Huddly, is intended to improve the AI capabilities of Huddly’s intelligent cameras.
Oslo-based Epigram specializes in computer vision and visual classification, developing tools and software to collect and analyze big data, with an acute focus on the application of AI to understand content. Founded in 2017, the company has worked with multiple clients, including Huddly, Gjensidige, Tradono and No Isolation, to develop artificial intelligence and machine-learning solutions.
Epigram has built an eight-person team of data scientists who will now join Huddly, increasing the headcount to around 65. Prior to the acquisition, Epigram assisted with extending the AI models that run on Huddly’s smart cameras, training them so that they accurately detect and count people in the camera’s view in real time.
With the acquisition of Epigram assets, Huddly is already implementing plans to extend its knowledge of what the camera is able to pick up, and how it is able to understand and respond to its surroundings. Huddly has already built a hardware platform, with the next step being the continuous training of the camera, enabling it to provide valuable features to the end user, such as capturing content and tracking of people’s movement and gestures.
“We are very happy to welcome our Epigram friends into the Huddly team. I’m confident that their addition will enable us to not only provide our end users with valuable experiences, but also to evolve our intelligent camera into a mature computer vision and AI platform that will inspire users and integrators. AI is the future for Huddly and will be the foundation for everything we do going forward,” Jonas Rinde, Huddly CEO, said of the acquisition.