Irisity recently announced a deal to acquire Agent Vi. Both are well-known analytics companies. In this note, CEOs from both companies speak to asmag.com on why they signed the deal and how the companies could benefit from it.
Irisity recently announced a deal to
acquire Agent Vi. Both are well-known analytics companies. In this note, the CEOs from both companies speak to asmag.com on why they signed the deal and how the companies could benefit from it.
In early September, another deal took place in the security merger and acquisition block. This time it was the acquisition of
Agent Vi by Irisity. According to an announcement by Agent Vi, it has entered into an agreement for its sale to Irisity for a total consideration of approximately US$67 million in cash and Irisity shares.
“We have drawn interest from various acquirer profiles over the years; however the acquisition with Irisity presents both the opportunity to continue and develop the business in combination with Irisity, as well as allows our shareholders to take part in that future growth through their continued ownership of shares in the merged entity, due to the deal including an Irisity stock component,” said Itsik Kattan, CEO of Agent Vi.
Both are well-known analytics firms. Agent Vi, based in Israel and with offices in the U.S. and Singapore, offers a range of analytics including detection of events in real-time, autonomous anomaly detection, video search and business intelligence applications. The Sweden-based Irisity, meanwhile, develops and markets video analytics software products for improved security and surveillance.
“Irisity is a video analytics company that develops AI-based solutions for security cameras. Our software IRIS can detect security threats such as intrusions, violent behavior, falls, flames and loitering. IRIS protects integrity with our patented anonymization technique that ensures accurate detections without exposing any personal information,” said Marcus Bäcklund, CEO of Irisity. “Our customers include enterprises, camera manufacturers, and security companies all around the world.”
According to Bäcklund, the name of the new company will continue to be Irisity. “The name of the company will remain Irisity, as well as our brand IRIS. Over time we will merge our two brands, but in the short term we’ll keep InnoVi and Agent Vi when motivated,” he said.
Leading global AI video analytics provider
The acquisition seeks to create the leading global AI video analytics provider, offering a range of software and software-as-a-service solutions for automatic analysis of surveillance footage and real-time video streams.
Video analytics have evolved from simple motion detection or electronic fences to advanced technologies with security, business intelligence and even
disease control applications. All this will be covered by the offerings of the combined company.
“Our solutions will focus around high-accuracy, long range perimeter intrusion detection as well as enterprise security applications. We plan to add additional algorithms to broaden our object and behavior recognition capabilities,” Kattan said.
“Together we will have the world's largest algorithm portfolio. Going forward we provide solutions for everything from social distancing to fall detection, forensic capabilities and possibilities to run our software all the way from edge to could,” Bäcklund said. “Through the acquisition of Agent Vi, new tech is added to the portfolio including functions such as advanced forensic search capabilities, anomaly detection, social distancing, traffic management, and updates to our grouping and unattended object detections. We believe these will complement the current IRIS offering extremely well.”
And this synergy goes beyond product but extends into channel and geographic coverage as well.
“Agent Vi has a large number of resellers and thousands of deployments in more than 90 countries, as well as partnership deals with some of the security giants including Securitas. Being of equal size and with complementary customer sets and geographical coverage, we expect to see synergy effects within all business units such as product development, technology, marketing, and sales,” Bäcklund said.
“Both companies bring values and complementary capabilities which the other could leverage. There are multiple complementing elements on the technology and product side, as well as the geographical coverage. We expect that both companies will merge completely to form one entity, operating globally and offering the broadest AI video analytics portfolio applicable to the majority of surveillance systems users,” Kattan said. “We will continue our approach towards global coverage, with focus on Americas, EU,
Middle East and SE Asia. Focus verticals will be smart cities, security monitoring companies, utilities and transportation.”