Eye-Fi

About Eye-Fi

Founded in 2005 by Yuval Koren, Ziv Gillat, Eugene Feinberg, and Berend Ozceri, Eye-Fi was a technology company that operated from Mountain View, California. The firm pioneered the concept of Wi-Fi-enabled SD memory cards, addressing the market of both amateur and professional photographers who sought a more efficient workflow. This allowed for the wireless and automatic transfer of digital photos and videos from a camera to a local computer, mobile device, or various online services.

The company's primary product was its line of SD cards with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. These cards could connect to a local Wi-Fi network to upload media, and later models could create their own direct network to a smartphone or tablet. This core functionality eliminated the need for cables or card readers, streamlining the process of getting images from the camera to a shareable or editable format. Certain camera manufacturers, like Canon, Nikon, and Sony, integrated Eye-Fi firmware into their devices, allowing for greater control over the card's functions directly from the camera's interface. Revenue was generated through the sale of these hardware cards and supplemented by a subscription-based cloud storage service called Eye-Fi Cloud, which offered unlimited photo storage for an annual or monthly fee. This service, later rebranded as Keenai, provided users with automatic backup and synchronization of their photos across multiple devices.

After its founding, Eye-Fi began commercial shipments in 2007 and later introduced features like Wi-Fi positioning system geotagging in 2009. The company raised a total of $36.5M in funding over several rounds from investors including Ntt DoCoMo, Opus Capital, and Shasta Ventures. In June 2016, the company's Eye-Fi Cloud service and its associated applications were acquired by Ricoh Innovations Corporation. The hardware portion of the business, producing the SD cards, was not part of this deal. Later that year, Eye-Fi announced it would be ending support for its older generation cards (X2 series and earlier) due to security vulnerabilities, effectively beginning the end-of-life process for its legacy products. The company ultimately ceased all business operations in 2016. The Keenai cloud service acquired by Ricoh was also discontinued on December 1, 2018.