AI-PRIME, an AI solutions startup, announced that it has secured tens of millions of dollars in A and A+ rounds of financing, with Sinovation Ventures and SAIF Partners leading the A Round, and existing shareholder Zhongxin Ziben making additional investment in the A+ Round.
Eagle ZHANG, Partner of Sinovation Ventures, says AI-PRIME is a pioneer in the safety control of the heavy manufacturing industry. Based on its AI and real-time image capture & processing technologies, and in-depth research of actual production needs in petrochemical, steel, metallurgy, mining, and other sectors, AI-PRIME proposed the AI+ control scheme for safe production, which effectively reduced the potential hazards. In just two years it has been actively applied by world-class customers in various sectors and achieved zero accidents during the applied period, which is a substantial improvement compared with traditional methods. Besides, the company's management team is ambitious, forward-looking, and practical. We believe that AI-PRIME will continue to deliver excellent corporate capabilities and valuable social value.
AI-PRIME’s main product, “AI Monitoring System for Industrial Safety,” is mainly used to improve the safety of personnel operations in various production scenarios of factories. ZHANG Zhaozhi, the founder and CEO, holds an MBA from the University of Southern California and a bachelor's degree in engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He once worked in a unicorn company in the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) industry and has 20 years of management experience.
AI-PRIME mainly focuses on petroleum, chemicals, steel, and other industries that invest in heavy assets. Its customers face common problems: workers are exposed to high-risk working environments, supervision shortages, and various isolated industrial systems caused by the continuous expansion of the industry. Any accident will cause great harm to the production and fixed asset safety.
To address these issues, AI-PRIME has launched the cloud industrial security platform “Prime Safety+” based on AI, real-time image processing, RPA, and knowledge graph. The platform consists of three sections, which are divided into a field monitoring and control module “Prime Eagle,” a fusion and data and analysis platform module “Prime Lion” and an RPA robot and multi-system fusion module “Prime Octopus” (formerly named Chipmunk).
“We care about safety and efficiency, and we devote ourselves to product innovation. In addition, our products can be integrated into other major industrial and management software for further data integration,” said ZHANG Zhaozhi.
“Prime Eagle”, an on-site monitoring platform, focuses on the analysis of unstructured videos and has significantly improved its ability to analyze unsafe phenomena. “In terms of identifying specific objects, Prime Eagle is now able to identify dynamic non-specific anomalies. This is thanks to core technologies such as knowledge mapping and AI, which can help AI identify human-abnormal states, non-standard or even illegal objects, and the unsafe human-environment association in videos with an accuracy rate of more than 98%. And, AI-PRIME products can also be applied to more complex scenarios, such as fire and height climbing scenarios, as well as compliance with the SOP.” ZHANG Zhaozhi explained.
AI-PRIME will also build a database of scenarios based on each security task itself. For instance, unsafe climbing in a particular factory would be considered a non-standard scenario. This allowed AI-PRIME to accumulate more algorithms and models, and gradually improve its recognition of scenarios.
In recent years, big enterprises have continued to improve information technology and security awareness, which allowed AI-PRIME to extend its underlying technical architecture. At present, the company has integrated with the vast majority of pan-security platforms. The specific operating conditions and risks that are monitored can be transmitted to the visualization screen of the pan-security platform that customers procured, which unified the customer’s product experience.
As for the competition involved, AI-PRIME focuses on serving people and will go further in safety warnings and operations. AI-PRIME identifies risks and gives early warning through analyzing the spatial relationship between people and objects, people and environment. This is different from other security platforms that focus on object recognition, and from other industrial systems that focus on processes.
AI-PRIME has entered a period of rapid commercial growth. From 2020 to 2021, the revenues of AI-PRIME Company increased by nearly eight times. It mainly serves large enterprises in the petroleum, chemicals, and steel industries. In addition, the company launched lightweight products for small and medium-sized enterprises.
AI-PRIME was established in 2018 and is headquartered in Shanghai. It currently has a staff of nearly 100 members, and the company will introduce more professionals after this round of financing. Going forward, AI-PRIME says it will explore more subdivision scenarios in major industries, applying cutting-edge technologies including AR and the industrial metaverse.