CEO and founder Alan O’Herlihy. Image: Everseen
Founded by Alan O’Herlihy, Cork-based Everseen develops applications that help some of the world’s top retailers, including Kroger, Meijer and Woolworths.
Everseen is not a start-up in the strictest sense of the word. The Cork-based company that develops computer vision and AI tech for some of the world’s largest retailers was founded around 15 years ago and employs nearly 1,000 people globally.
But last year, Everseen raised €65m in a Series A follow-on funding round led by Boston-based Crosspoint Capital Partners. Now, the company is on a mission to transform retail with its comprehensive vision AI factory that helps the industry build and deploy a full set of computer vision applications in one integrated technology stack.
“That means that retailers can create better experiences for their customers and store associates while also improving their margins,” founder and CEO Alan O’Herlihy tells SiliconRepublic.com.
Everseen develops applications that help some of the world’s top retailers, including Kroger, Meijer and Woolworths, to minimise what is known as retail shrink – when a store has fewer items in stock than in its recorded book inventory – by reducing errors at checkout. These applications also help stores optimise their operations and enhance customer operations.
“We give retailers an accurate real-time view of product stock movements, helping them to stay on top of replenishing inventory, boosting on-shelf availability and ultimately increasing sales,” O’Herlihy explains. “We are operationalising vision AI at an unprecedented scale. Our solutions are installed in thousands of stores around the globe.”
How it started
According to O’Herlihy, Everseen processes more than 300 years of video in real-time every day, and it has a global footprint of edge AI-powered computer vision across more than 160,000 endpoints worldwide.
“Retailers are embracing advanced technologies that both optimise their customers’ experience and improve their business, and we provide a complete AI platform and set of applications to support them,” O’Herlihy continues.
“Our vision AI applications also help expedite self-checkout, and support inventory management both on-shelf and in the stockroom. To support our customers, we partner with leading, AI, cloud computing and hardware providers such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo and NCR.”
As a young child, O’Herlihy grew up working with his parents who ran a small mom-and-pop grocery shop in Glenville, Co Cork.
“Any chance I could get, I would hang out with my grandfather and uncles as they set up a new farm machinery business,” he says.
“I loved being around them and seeing all the inventions in this space. This was during a very exciting and innovative period for farm machinery (1980s through the 1990s). In particular, one of my uncles, Neilus, was continuously tinkering and inventing new types of farm machinery, and this absolutely intrigued me. That’s where I definitely got the bug for inventing.”
How it’s going
Today, Everseen has a dedicated team of inventors, research scientists, engineers, AI experts and retail industry veterans. Back in 2020, the company took the top spot in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 awards, which ranks Ireland’s 50 fastest-growing technology companies based on revenue growth over the last four years.
In the summer of 2021, Crosspoint invested an undisclosed amount in the Cork start-up to support the expansion of its technology after raising $1.3bn for its debut fund focused on cybersecurity, privacy and infrastructure software.
“A key milestone and accomplishment for us is that we’ve established the largest global footprint of edge AI computer vision,” O’Herlihy says.
“That scale has enabled us to operationalise AI in a way that has not yet been achieved in any other application or industry, so we’re incredibly proud of that accomplishment. And we see tremendous opportunity for growth based on that scale and expertise.”
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