AI startup Polarr bags $11.5 million in funding

Polarr is an AI startup and innovator of AI technology used for photography, video and other creative processes. The platform brings edge AI technology to photography and video and boasts an impressive 20 million app downloads.

The stratup has now raised $11.5 million to support R&D, engineering, and technology partnership initiatives. This was led by Threshold Ventures (formerly DFJ Venture), with participation from Cota Capital and Pear Ventures.

Alongside this new funding, Polarr has said Chris Kelley and Mar Hershenson will be joining its board of directors.

Polarr has developed a deep-learning based AI composition capability for the native camera app on the new Samsung Galaxy S10.  The Galexy S10 sports a breakthrough display, camera, and intelligent performance. A Composition Guide on the phone uses Polarr’s technology, trained with thousands of shots from professional photographers, to guide the user to the most desirable composition interactively.

Borui Wang, Derek Yan, and Enhao Gong founded Polarr in 2014. The startup enables and inspires everyone to make beautiful creations using the power of edge AI technology.

Polarr provides offline AI technology for photography, video and other creative use cases to provide developers tools and resources to create world-class applications, aiming to enable and inspire everyone to take fantastic photos and viedos. The Polarr Photo Editor is a photo editing application used globally by more than four million novice and professional photographers each month.

“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.”

Borui Wang, co-founder and CEO, Polarr has said, “this new round of financing is a tangible endorsement of our approach to enable and inspire everyone to make beautiful creations.”