Voxel raises $15 million for AI-powered workplace safety

Voxel, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) company for workplace safety, has secured $15 million in new funding. The company uses computer vision and AI to identify hazards, risky behavior and operational inefficiencies in the workplace.

The company has grown rapidly by reducing site accidents by more than 80% and increasing operational productivity by more than 20% using existing cameras. The new funding will help increase the number of security and operational risks the software can support and scale to additional customer facilities.

Voxel’s analytics help sites identify operational inefficiencies and design policies to prevent future problems. Once an event, such as a spill, speeding vehicle or an ergonomic problem is identified, a real-time alert is sent to on-site personnel who can take immediate action. These proactive measures enable companies to significantly reduce employee compensation and general liability costs while improving their operations.

Make an impact

Voxel’s team is led by CEO Alex Senemar, who previously co-founded Sherbit, an AI-powered remote health monitoring system for hospitals (acquired in 2018), as well as co-founders Anurag Kanungo, Harishma Dayanidhi and Troy Carlson.

“We felt that the financial incentives in healthcare made it difficult to develop technology that positively impacts people’s health,” Senemar told VentureBeat. “We looked at opportunities to prevent injuries and accidents before healthcare was involved and realized that if we applied our experience with computer vision to safety, we could have a huge impact.”

The company is exploring ways companies can use the technology to lower their insurance premiums by helping teams identify and mitigate security risks while respecting privacy. Voxel does not use facial or person recognition to mitigate privacy concerns.

“This has helped our customers focus on improving the safety culture rather than using the tool as a big brother camera system,” said Senemar. Once a security risk is identified, the system sorts events in real time, allowing onsite personnel to receive notifications for urgent risks or review them later in the application.

Converting big data into safer spaces

Markets and Markets forecasts the global safety sector in the workplace will grow from $12.1 billion in 2020 to $19.9 billion in 2025. It notes that the market growth can be attributed to the integration of big data as a predictive tool for risk management and new trends such as smart personal protective equipment (PPE) , intelligence clothing , autonomous vehicles and smart security.

Voxel’s competitors include wearables companies such as Soter, ProGlove, Strongarm and Kinetic Wearable and vision AI companies such as Drishti, Invisible AI and Intenseye. The wearable vendors are optimized for rich ergonomic data, but require employees to wear and charge them continuously. Both Drishti and Invisible AI use special cameras to improve employee productivity and activities.

A key benefit of Voxel is the support for existing surveillance cameras, which reduces installation costs and speeds up implementation.

“We believe that computer vision and existing surveillance camera infrastructure are better aligned to improve workplace security and operations, given the greater magnitude of risks they can identify and the lack of additional hardware requirements,” said Senemar.

Ultimately, Voxels technology can also assist with facility-level safety planning using simulation and digital twins.

“It’s too early to say, but as we capture more interactions of people in different environments, it would be interesting to explore the possibilities of using digital twins to improve the layout of work environments for safety prevention,” he said. Senemar.

Eclipse Ventures led the $15 million Series A funding round with participation from MTech and World Innovation Labs. This latest financing round brings total equity to $18 million.