London-based AI startup Unitary has raised $15 million in Series A funding to expand its video and image classification technology. The round was led by European VC firm Creandum, with participation from Paladin Capital Group and Plural.
Unitary will use the capital to advance its R&D capabilities, grow its team, and partner with leading social media platforms. The company aims to ethically enhance visual content experiences online through advanced AI that proactively moderates harmful material.
Founded in 2019, Unitary has developed proprietary machine learning algorithms that analyze multiple signals to understand both the contents and contexts of videos, images, audio, and text. This technology helps digital platforms quickly identify inappropriate or illegal material at scale.
As online content grows exponentially, manual content review becomes unrealistic. Unitary's AI offers a scalable solution, classifying content to empower human moderators.
"Our vision is for ethical, empathetic AI to enhance how visual content is experienced online," said Unitary CEO Sasha Haco. "This funding enables us to stay at the forefront of video understanding research and fulfill our mission of making the internet better."
Unitary will expand its 50-person team across engineering, research, commercial and operations functions to keep advancing its AI. It also aims to form partnerships with leading platforms to integrate its technology.
According to Unitary, the volume of complex video content online is expected to increase 10x by 2025. New regulations in the UK and EU will also require more proactive moderation from platforms. Unitary's multimodal AI is designed to help navigate this nuance at scale.
The company previously raised an $8 million seed round in March 2022, led by Plural. The new investment brings Unitary's total funding to $23 million.
Unitary aims to develop AI responsibly, ensuring it enhances online experiences without overstepping ethical boundaries. Its products have already been used to classify billions of online images and videos.
The company also maintains an open-source AI tool called Detoxify, which has been downloaded over 7 million times. Unitary will continue improving this tool to promote online safety through ethical AI.