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Roboflow

Robotics · Des Moines, United States · Founded 2019

Roboflow provides a comprehensive software-as-a-service platform designed to streamline the entire workflow of building and deploying computer vision models. Founded in 2019 by Joseph Nelson and Brad Dwyer, the company originated from their own challenges with the complexities of creating computer vision applications, such as an augmented reality game for solving Sudoku puzzles. This firsthand experience led them to develop a suite of tools aimed at making computer vision more accessible to all developers. The company launched in 2020 after participating in the Y Combinator S20 accelerator. Roboflow has secured significant venture capital, with total funding reaching $63.6 million through several rounds. Key funding includes a $2.1 million seed round in January 2021, a $20 million Series A in September 2021 led by Craft Ventures, and a $40 million Series B round in 2024 led by GV (formerly Google Ventures). This financial backing supports Roboflow's mission to simplify and democratize computer vision technology. Roboflow's platform enables developers to manage image and video data, annotate datasets with tools like model-assisted labeling, apply preprocessing and augmentations, and train models with a single click. It supports deployment via API or directly to edge devices. The business operates on a freemium and subscription-based model, offering various plans including a free public tier for open-source projects, and paid plans for private and enterprise use that provide additional features, privacy, and support. Revenue is generated through these subscriptions and a credit-based system for usage of features like training, storage, and inference. The platform serves over a million developers, including teams at more than half of the Fortune 100 companies. Keywords: computer vision, machine learning, data annotation, model training, MLOps, AI development, image labeling, dataset management, model deployment, edge AI, SaaS, developer tools, object detection, image classification, data augmentation, API, AI platform, visual data, deep learning, neural networks