This UK-based AI startup raises €9.44M to teach machines to understand human behaviour; here’s how

London-based Humanising Autonomy is a predictive AI company that helps improve the way vehicles and systems interact with people in any environment. Today, the company has announced that it has raised $11M (approx €9.44M) in its Series A round of funding.

The current round follows the company’s $6M (approx €5.15M) Seed round funding and brings the total capital raised to $17M (approx €14.6M) to date.

Investors in this round

The Series A round was co-led by Beacon Capital LLP and Emellience Partners, the strategic investment arm of Nihon Unisys Group.

The round also saw participation from new and existing investors including Anthemis Group, Global Brain Corporation, Synapse Partners, Amplifier, Aken Capital, and Guy Hands, founder & chairman of Terra Firma Capital Partners.

Capital utilisation

The proceeds from this round will accelerate the company’s cloud-based deployment into additional industries and new geographies. The funds will also help scale the use of its Behaviour AI platform to help business decision-making processes that use data captured from cameras.

Besides, the funds will also be used to expand Humanising Autonomy’s diverse team across Europe, Asia, and North America.

Behaviour AI Platform

Founded in 2017 by Leslie Nooteboom, Maya Pindeus, and Raunaq Bose, Humanising Autonomy claims to be changing the way machines understand humans. Its Behaviour AI Platform uses computer vision software to understand and predict human behaviour from camera images and videos.

“It combines customer-centric product design, proven engineering methodologies, and proprietary human behaviour data sets to develop technology that can accurately and ethically understand and predict the way humans behave,” says the company. 

Maya Pindeus believes, “People are interacting with machines more than ever before. Whether we’re walking, shopping, driving, looking at billboards, or just being at work, our world is laden with automation that doesn’t understand how people behave. That lack of human context leads to inefficient decisions by the machine, uninformed operational strategies by the business responsible for them and, ultimately, a poor experience for us as people.”

“Our technology is changing how machines understand people and how businesses evaluate and extract insight from their data. We are delighted to work with our new partners Emellience and Beacon Capital in scaling our efforts in developing ethical technology built around people to ensure human/machine interaction is safer, more efficient, effective, and more human,” he continues. 

Through computer-vision models and adhering to the strict ethical use of data, Humanising Autonomy’s Behaviour AI platform offers usable insight, both in real-time and for historical analysis to help customers make smarter business decisions.

Since partnering with leading chip manufacturers such as Ambarella and launching new cloud-based products in 2020, the company has rapidly expanded the value and application of its GDPR-compliant software.

Humanising Autonomy has also announced to launch products for advertisement effectiveness, smartphone applications, and construction and warehouse safety in 2022. 

It will also expand its existing offerings within the automotive and dashcam industry, where its software can alert drivers in real-time of potential safety incidents and inform fleet management systems of risky driving situations.