Allegion Ventures invests $20 million in Ambient.ai

CARMEL, Ind.—Allegion Ventures, the corporate venture fund of Allegion plc, has made a $20 million investment in Ambient.ai, an artificial intelligence-powered computer vision intelligence (CVI) company.

Based in San Jose, Calif., Ambient.ai applies AI and CVI to existing security camera infrastructure, allowing their platform to deliver near human-level visual perception that analyzes actions and situational context to create efficient and accurate threat detection.

Allegion President and CEO John H. Stone said Ambient.ai aligns with Allegion’s focus on using innovative technology to enable seamless access and a safer world.

“This is the largest and most significant investment in the history of Allegion Ventures, reflecting the tremendous potential we see for future collaboration between Ambient.ai and Allegion,” he said.  “Allegion’s connected hardware manages access and entry points, while Ambient’s platform provides contextual understanding to dramatically reduce false alarms in access control systems and vastly improve threat detection and response.”

Allegion Ventures President Rob Martens, who also serves as chief innovation and design officer at Allegion, emphasized that Ambient.ai is a true innovator in the marketplace. Martens will serve as a board observer for Ambient.ai.

“We are thrilled to work with Ambient.ai. Shikhar [Shrestha] and Vikesh [Khanna] are trailblazers in CVI and truly understand how technology can advance threat detection as well as safe access, people movement and data analytics,” Martens said. “They’re moving video surveillance from a reactive to a proactive resource, meeting evolving customer needs in physical security.”

Ambient.ai was founded in 2017 by CEO Shikhar Shrestha and Chief Technology Officer Vikesh Khanna, who shared a vision of making security proactive through technology.

“As we kickstart this transformative partnership with Allegion, we’re propelled by our vision of a powerful AI platform, built on seamless integrations with leading security technologies,” Shrestha said. “Allegion’s best-in-class products bring exciting possibilities to the table as we continue to deliver compelling solutions to prevent even the most complex security incidents.”

Additional terms of the Allegion Ventures deal were not disclosed.

For more information, visit www.AllegionVentures.com