Gaze, a Singapore and Bangladesh-based artificial intelligence startup, has raised $830,000 USD in seed funding for its visual recognition API platform that aims to enable effortless integration of visual recognition technology into any software system or stack.
The funding round was led by Anchorless Bangladesh, a US-based VC focused on investing in Bangladesh and included follow-on capital from an existing angel investor, Mr. Mohammad Maaz.
Founded by Shehzad Noor Taus Priyo and Motasim Rahman in 2018, Gaze is an artificial intelligence startup that offers an API for visual recognition technologies like spoof-proof face recognition, product recognition, multilingual OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and more. The company says it aims to build a developer ecosystem surrounding its API, enabling creatives around the world to build AI-enabled products or services. It aims to provide the best-in-class developer experience to its users. The company says it is on a mission to embed AI into everyday life by enabling others to easily build software powered by visual recognition AI.
The company claims, with Gaze’s technology online transactions will be safer (face recognition authentication), sign up/in will be effortless (identity verification using OCR & Face Recognition), finding the product you are looking for will be easier (image-based similar product search), checking into your workplace will be contactless (face recognition check-in) and paying for your parking will be seamless (license plate recognition).
Gaze has a team of 23 people across Canada, Singapore, and Bangladesh. Shehzad Noor Taus Priyo, Co-founder and CEO of Gaze, worked as a deep learning engineer at NVIDIA’s Metropolis division prior to co-founding Gaze. Motasim Rahman, Co-founder & COO of Gaze, worked as the Chief of Product at Fireout, a Vancouver based startup focused on building intelligent fire extinguishers before founding Gaze.
Kevin Pierce, Chief Technology Officer of Gaze, is a veteran engineer and leader with over 20 years of industry experience. Prior to joining Gaze, he led the entire engineering team at Picatic (a Vancouver-based online ticketing startup) that got acquired by Eventbrite, where he then joined as Principal Software Engineer & Engineering Manager.
Dr. Nabeel Mohammed, Chief of Research of Gaze, is an academic who specializes in machine learning and computer vision research. He holds a Ph.D. in computer vision from Monash University Australia.
