iSIZE Technologies graduates from inaugural Oxford CDL and raises almost £750k from notable Silicon Valley Investors
Deep-tech company iSIZE Technologies has today announced the closure of its first seed funding round, raising a total of £740k from figures including Patrick Pichette, partner at Inovia Capital and ex- Google CFO; TD Veen AS, a notable Norwegian family office; and a number of other CDL investors. This round brings iSIZE’s total funding to date to over £1.3m.
The round was led by some of the leading tech investors of the inaugural Creative Destruction Lab programme at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. iSIZE graduates the accelerator programme this month alongside only 9 others, from over 250 applications, after an intensive 9-month programme.
iSIZE specialises in deep learning for video delivery and has developed a deep perceptual 'precoder' - a software solution that uses AI trained to optimise visual quality in order to save video bitrate during encoding. Its flagship product, BitSave, available both as a SaaS platform at bitsave.tech and for on-premise use, reduces encoding bitrates by up to 40%, while at the same time enhancing video perceptual quality. This results in substantial data, energy and cost savings for both the company hosting the video and the end consumer.
Speaking after the round closed Pichette said: “Video capacity needs are exploding worldwide, with no end in sight for years to come. Managing capacity and costs are now becoming a strategic issue for many bandwidth providers, and iSIZE addresses this problem head on, with an innovative, amazingly elegant, platform agnostic solution. The results speak for themselves.”
CEO of iSIZE Technologies, Sergio Grce, added: “We are thrilled to have graduated from the CDL-Oxford and closed this seed funding round; our thanks to all our investors who see the potential of our technology to transform the world of streaming. Data centres contribute more global emissions than the aviation industry, and with lockdowns across the globe ever more people are turning to video content for entertainment or remote working. We are proud to be working with household names in the sector to reduce the strain on already-overburdened networks and cut the ballooning costs of the data centre and streaming industries.”
Board Advisor Paul Massara, ex-CEO of Npower, agreed with Grce: “I am very excited about the difference iSIZE can make to reducing both the cost and carbon associated with streaming, and glad to be involved on the Board. It is essential that we leverage advanced AI techniques to move to a low carbon economy, and the big data users should take note from a corporate social responsibility perspective.”
A leading investor in the round, CEO of TD Veen AS, Kjell Skappel concluded, “We often assume the internet is a solely virtual entity, but it has its roots in a very real chain of data centres, with very real energy and emissions costs. iSIZE’s solution is easy for tech giants to apply and brings significant benefits, so we are delighted to be part of bringing BitSave to a wider market.”
iSIZE now has its sights set on helping the giants of video streaming meet the challenges of an ever-increasing demand for high-quality video content; reducing the data cost of streaming video while simultaneously improving visual quality.
