IQ Engines, Inc. today announced it has secured $3.8 million in Series B funding from Third Point Ventures and Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. The funds will be used to improve the speed and accuracy of the company's image recognition technology and to build new tools for developers to integrate visual search into their applications.

IQ Engines' image recognition software, VisionIQ, makes it easy to add visual search to mobile applications and web services. VisionIQ can identify virtually any image or object, label and categorize that object, and enable instant searches for relevant information based on this data. IQ Engines makes this capability available to developers through the VisionIQ application programming interface (API) and software development kits (SDKs) and delivers image recognition as a service to businesses.

IQ Engines is the only image intelligence service provider to combine multiple computer vision techniques, barcode scanning, human crowdsourcing and a real-time learning engine. The result is a powerful image recognition platform that delivers outstanding performance to identify objects quickly and accurately.

Today, customers such as Rakuten Buy.com use VisionIQ to power mobile visual search apps that let people find product information and prices by taking a picture with their mobile phones. Consumers love the convenience because snapping a photo is faster than typing or speaking. Companies benefit because it is a great way to get people to search, discover and engage with their products.

Visual brand engagement is another way IQ Engines' customers are using image recognition. In this case, consumer brands such as Old Navy offer deals to people who snap photos of the company logo. Consumers say it is a fun way to save money. Companies benefit because it drives in-store and online traffic as well as builds loyalty by encouraging people to engage with the brand.

Robert Schwartz, managing partner at Third Point Ventures, said: "IQ Engines tackles one of the biggest challenges in computer science today -- how to make computers see the world around them. I'm really impressed with the team and its vision of making image recognition an embedded feature in every device that has a camera."

Tony Palcheck, managing director of Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, said: "We see image recognition as a game-changing technology that materially simplifies the acquisition of information by consumers on their smartphones and tablets. We also see a future for this technology in more robust, mission-critical enterprise applications. IQ Engines is at the forefront of an important trend toward intelligent cameras that can identify real-world objects and make intelligent decisions based on the information collected. We see this as the next frontier in simplifying information acquisition and are thrilled to be involved with the leader in this growing field."

Gerry Pesavento, CEO of IQ Engines, said: "VisionIQ is hands down the most advanced image recognition platform available today. No one else offers the combination of computer vision, barcodes and real-time crowdsourcing that enables any image recognition. Whether you want super fast on-device scans or large-scale cloud-based recognition, we've got you covered. Soon we'll be adding powerful new features, such as similarity sort and optical character recognition that improve the quality and speed of even the most challenging image scans."

About IQ Engines
IQ Engines provides image recognition software, called VisionIQ, that can identify the content in virtually any photo. The company provides this software to developers and offers a simple way to integrate image recognition into mobile applications and web services. IQ Engines' customers include retailers, media companies and mobile app developers who are using VisionIQ to power visual search, shopping, content discovery and other apps. Learn more and sign up for a free trial at http://www.iqengines.com.

About Motorola Solutions Venture Capital
Motorola Solutions Venture Capital is the strategic equity investment arm of Motorola Solutions. Its diversified portfolio is focused on "new-idea" companies and opportunities that complement Motorola Solutions' business strategy. Motorola Solutions Venture Capital invests at all stages in developing companies to accelerate access to new technologies, new markets and new talents. For more information, please visit http://www.motorolasolutions.com/ventures.

About Third Point Ventures
Third Point Management Company L.L.C. oversees a family of investment funds focused on public and private growth and special situation investments. Third Point Management was founded by Daniel S. Loeb in 1995 and currently manages over 9 billion US dollars in assets.