Dragonfruit AI names Ray Cooke as VP of Business Development

MENLO PARK, Calif.—Dragonfruit AI, the provider of one of retail’s first massively scalable video AI platforms – Frontier - announced that Ray Cooke has joined the company as Vice President of Business Development. 

Cooke, who most recently served as SVP at Hanwha Techwin America, will help large-scale retailers use Frontier to derive insights from their video to address pivotal challenges, such as optimizing staffing, detecting unsafe conditions, accelerating investigations, managing store layouts and streamlining operations. 

“We’re excited to have Ray onboard to engage with our retail customers," states Dragonfruit CEO Amit Kumar. “He brings a wealth of experience in video technology coupled with a practitioner’s eye for problem-solving that will be invaluable in helping retailers navigate the possibilities of video AI.” 

Cooke has over 25 years of experience in safety and security solutions at companies such as IBM and Cisco. Prior to joining Dragonfruit, he spent over eight years at Hanwha Techwin America, where he started as VP Business Development. In that role, Cooke landed the first and largest enterprise project win in retail for North America. Later, as SVP of Products, Solutions, & Integrations, he expanded Hanwha’s product line while growing their roster of third-party integrations.  

Dragonfruit’s Frontier was custom-built for retail loss prevention/asset protection (video summaries, ORC investigations, OSHA compliance, slip/fall, liquid spill), store operations (checkout metrics, point-of-sale analysis with video verification) and marketing/merchandising (in-store commerce funnels).

Designed from the ground-up for multi-location retailers, Frontier combines a powerful base station leveraging the Apple M1 architecture with advanced cloud intelligence. Starting at just $900/location/year, Frontier provides the flexibility for retailers to start solving their most pressing needs and add on more capabilities as required.

“I’m excited to be joining an innovative and customer-focused company like Dragonfruit,” Cooke noted. “I look forward to working together with retailers to leverage Dragonfruit’s AI advantages to provide the data and visibility needed for their most important decisions.”