Aura Vision Labs snags £100k seed investment for retail customer tracking tech

UK startup, Aura Vision Labs, is progressing from the University of Southampton’s Future Worlds incubator and joining the Collider accelerator, after completing a £100,000 seed investment deal.

The venture has developed a deep learning system that can detect the gender, age and clothing styles of every person in a crowd. It uses computer vision and biometric identification techniques to analyse CCTV video footage, producing insights into customer behaviour that can help boost sales performance and loyalty. Co-founders Daniel Martinho-Corbishley and Jaime Lomeli have built the startup on PhD research undertaken in Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton. 

“We’re thrilled to announce this important step in our startup journey and are looking forward to progressing our business alongside our new investors,” says Lomeli. “With a few other offers on the table, we decided to close this deal because of the valuable experience the Collider team can provide. Our interests are well aligned."

Aura Vision Labs was launched last spring when the team first pitched the idea at an on-campus Dragons’ Den style investment competition. They have been based in the University’s Future Worlds incubator since the summer and received early-stage support from the Web Science Institute’s Z21 Innovation Fund. 

"The past year has been a great experience,” says Lomeli. “We’ve been continually learning and developing through mentoring and support from the University. This January, we exhibited with the Future Worlds incubator at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and this has resulted in many very important leads that are becoming our first key partnerships. We plan to release a scalable platform in the next few months, before raising a second round of investment to scale up and expand our customer base.”