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London-based iSize is a deep-tech company specialising in deep learning to optimise video streaming and delivery. In a recent development, the company has announced that it has raised a further $6.3M (approx €5.22M) in a fresh round of funding.

iSize aims to make streaming more environmentally friendly without reducing quality. With this round, the company has raised a total of $8.2M (approx €6.79M) in funding, to date.

The round was led by Octopus Ventures. In addition, existing investors, including TD Veen and Patrick Pichette – Chairman of Twitter and ex-CFO of Google, have also participated in this round.

The proceeds from this round will help iSize to accelerate its traction in the US, strengthen its technical team and patent portfolio to improve the results and innovations it delivers to its customers.

Pain-point of the internet industry

In the current scenario, video streaming is at an all-time high which has also been accelerated due to the pandemic as companies shift to working from home. With more people spending their time on the internet during the lockdown, streaming and content companies are feeling the pressure from users and advertisers to provide ever-increasing video quality.

With forecasts projecting video to reach 82 per cent of total global internet traffic by 2022, there is also growing awareness of its carbon footprint, with research indicating that it already contributes to more than 1 per cent of global emissions.

As a result, streaming and content providers are increasingly turning to technology to address the challenge of delivering a reliable and high-quality experience while managing the financial and environmental costs of doing so.

To help solve this problem, iSize claims to have pioneered deep-learning solutions that optimise video streaming quality while reducing bitrate requirements, allowing for a significant reduction in data and energy consumption.

Codec independent AI technology

Founded in 2016 by Sergio Grce and Yiannis Andreopoulos, iSize specialises in deep learning for video delivery. The company’s technology is a proprietary AI-trained, deep perceptual optimiser that is trained to ‘see with the human eye’ in order to optimise video quality and deliver significant bitrate savings.

The technology is deployed as an add-on feature across VoD, live streaming, gaming and IoT and bolts-on to the existing conventional video delivery pipeline while integrating with all video encoding standards (including AVC, HEVC and AV1) – all without requiring changes to the streaming process or to end-users’ devices. 

This allows its customers to improve the end-user experience and reduce costs without breaking standards and with minimal deployment risk.

iSize has already attracted attention from some of the world’s largest technology companies to whom they already licensed their BitSave technology. Partners include Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, and IBM, among others.

The founding team combines years of research in machine learning, neural networks, and video signal processing with dozens of research publications. The company is also a graduate of the Creative Destruction Lab Oxford 2019-2020 programme, where it received advice and investment from expert mentors.

Sergio Grce, Founder & CEO of iSize, says, “Today, there are more people streaming more video than ever before. Our customers recognise both the commercial opportunity and their social responsibility to optimise their video delivery pipelines with our pioneering technology. We are excited to partner with Octopus Ventures to tap into their network and expertise in building world-changing companies.”