Polarr Raises $11.5M Series A

The round was led by Threshold Ventures (formerly DFJ Venture) with participation from Cota Capital and Pear Ventures. The new funding will support R&D, engineering, and technology partnership initiatives.

Polarr's computer vision and deep learning technology is transforming mobile photography, video, and other creative work, allowing anyone to create professional-quality content using powerful tools for composing, editing, and curating photos and videos. The Polarr Photo Editor is a photo editing application used globally by more than four million novice and professional photographers each month.

Polarr Delivers Powerful AI Composition Capabilities to Samsung Galaxy S10
Polarr developed a deep-learning based AI composition capability for the native camera app on the new Samsung Galaxy S10, which sports a breakthrough display, camera, and intelligent performance. The Galaxy S10's Composition Guide uses Polarr's technology, trained with thousands of shots from professional photographers, to guide the user to the most desirable composition interactively, creating the perfect image every time.

Polarr Powers the Future of Creative AI
Deep learning has exploded, with AI giants building advanced frameworks and mobile device makers building ever more specialized chipsets. However, developers must re-learn how to work with each and every chip. The Polarr Vision Engine is chip agnostic from a developer's perspective, providing a higher-level abstraction to run deep learning models on any device – from the latest smartphones to drone cameras. All of Polarr's AI modules run entirely on the edge, with low memory and power consumption.

"Polarr's expertise across design, hardware, and deep learning is really unique," said Chris Kelley, a partner at Threshold Ventures. "Not only do they give consumers a way to leverage skills from the world's best photographers, but pros can also use their tools to create something really special."

Chris Kelley will join Polarr's board of directors, along with Mar Hershenson of Pear Ventures.

Polarr's AI composition solution is based on the Polarr Vision Engine, a core technology infrastructure used to power other proprietary Polarr solutions designed for current and future consumer apps to harness the power of AI to deliver unique, creative, and visual experiences. In addition to Samsung, the Polarr Vision Engine is used by other leading consumer hardware and software makers including Qualcomm, Oppo and HoverCam. Polarr is currently working on expanding its platform support and service capability to allow more developers to enjoy the same power and benefits of the engine.

"As deep learning compute shifts from the cloud to edge devices, there is a growing opportunity to provide sophisticated and creative edge AI technologies to mobile devices," said Borui Wang, co-founder and CEO, Polarr. "This new round of financing is a tangible endorsement of our approach to enable and inspire everyone to make beautiful creations."

About Polarr
With offices in Silicon Valley and Shenzhen, Polarr develops edge AI technology for photography, video and other creative use cases to give all photographers the professional tools and resources they need to create their best work possible. With expertise in on-device model training and compression, use case discovery and execution speed, Polarr's flagship photography app, Polarr Photo Editor, is currently used by more than 20 million photographers around the world. The company's technologies are also embedded in some of the hottest mobile devices including the Samsung Galaxy S10.