Deep Sentinel, a pioneer in AI-based home protection, today announced it has closed $7.4 million in venture capital funding. Founded by Amazon veteran and artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer David Selinger, Deep Sentinel is re-inventing home protection to predict and stop crime in real time through a powerful combination of AI, computer vision and next-generation camera hardware. The company has attracted multiple leading technology investors to its Series A round, which was led by Shasta Ventures with additional investment from Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment company of Jeff Bezos; Lux Capital; and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's UP2398.

"Current home security is ineffective, failing millions of homeowners and wasting the valuable resources of our law enforcement agencies across the U.S.," said David Selinger, co-founder and CEO of Deep Sentinel. "Deep Sentinel uses sophisticated AI, including computer vision and deep learning algorithms, to predict and disrupt crimes before they occur. By removing threats before they escalate, Deep Sentinel will reduce crime and bring peace of mind to millions of American homes."

"Home security is a multi-billion market that is radically underserved by often antiquated legacy providers and solutions," said Jason Pressman, Managing Director at Shasta Ventures and member of Deep Sentinel's Board of Directors. "Artificial Intelligence is changing what is possible in home protection, and Deep Sentinel is right at the forefront of driving this change. David has created multiple technologies that have become part of our daily lives, and knows what it takes to build a transformative tech company. With decades of engineering and product success, Deep Sentinel's team is rising to the profound challenge of using technology products to keep every American family safe."

Market Opportunity

In the quest to protect their homes, Americans spend billions each year on burglar alarm services. But this often fails to keep households safe, and the FBI reported an estimated 8 million property crimes, including nearly 1.6 million burglaries, across the nation in 2015 (representing $14.3 billion in losses). More bad news: false alarms on home burglar alarms are over 95% and several U.S. counties have standing policies to not respond. In addition, home property crime is trending away from burglary to mail theft and other forms of theft - crimes for which traditional home security solutions have no answer.

Simultaneously, U.S. consumers are flocking to cameras to help keep their homes safe. But these cameras are often just surveillance tools, at best recording the crime but playing no role in preventing it.

Introducing Deep Sentinel: Intelligent Crime Prevention

Deep Sentinel replaces the burglar alarm with preventive home protection, bringing AI into cameras in order to stop a burglary, mail theft or driveway break-in before it happens - and protecting families and their property while they are at home, at work or on vacation.

The company has developed an entirely proprietary AI optimized for security that is capable of predicting criminal activity, and has filed four patents around its new approach to AI and its uses in home security. With Deep Sentinel, powerful algorithms trained to understand if a crime is about to occur trigger alert systems to enable intervention before the level of the crime escalates. This cutting-edge AI software is fully integrated into Deep Sentinel's outdoor camera solution.

"Lux is proud to have been an early seed investor in Deep Sentinel and long-time supporter of David," said Bilal Zuberi, Partner at Lux Capital. "He has spent his career developing creative new ways to interpret data to understand human behavior - ultimately building successful new businesses around those insights. David is an independent thinker who uses data science to shed light in areas others don't yet see. By bringing together neural networks and computer vision, Deep Sentinel promises to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio in security systems, ultimately keeping people safer in their homes."

Deep Sentinel Executive Team

The Deep Sentinel executive team has successfully commercialized machine and deep learning technologies for hundreds of millions of consumers across the globe. Co-founder and CEO David Selinger started his career in R&D at Amazon where he developed the first commercial product recommendation system. He subsequently co-founded Redfin, the next-generation real estate brokerage, and RichRelevance, the #1 provider of personalization for brands like Office Depot and Costco. Selinger is joined by Deep Sentinel co-founder Winston Chen, formerly a senior engineer at FlipTop (LinkedIn), Banjo, and Quid, who leads Deep Sentinel's engineering efforts both in the US and Taiwan.