Robot-training startup to create new Yorkshire jobs with £2.3m funding round

A robot-training startup has completed a £2.3m funding round to help it expand and build its team.

Mindtech Global, based in Sheffield, has raised £2.3m in a round led by NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, which is managed by Mercia and is part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF), with Deeptech Labs and In-Q-Tel participating.

Mindtech trains robots to recognise images, with its Chameleon platform reducing the time and cost involved in bringing artificial intelligence (AI) systems to market by changing they are trained.

The platform enables developers to generate a sequence of synthetic images and create scenarios that show the algorithm what to look out for.

The funding is set to help the company create new roles and expand its sales internationally.

Steve Harris, CEO of Mindtech, commented: “Data scientists and machine learning engineers can spend up to 80 per cent of their time sourcing, cleaning and organizing training data. Our Chameleon platform solves this challenge.

“This round will enable us to open up our platform to even more customers in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific, enabling them to build AI vision solutions that better understand the way humans interact with each other and the world around them.”

Will Clark of Mercia said: “Mindtech’s game-changing technology has the potential to transform the AI industry, which will underpin many areas of our day to day life.

“This investment round, led by NPIF and Mercia, will allow it to build its team and its client base to take the business to the next level.”