Clarifai
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Artificial intelligence, Computer vision |
| Founded | 2013 |
| Founder | Matthew Zeiler |
| Headquarters | Wilmington , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Matthew Zeiler (CEO) |
| Products | AI-powered computer vision platform, APIs for image and video recognition, custom model training, visual search, content moderation, media management tools |
| Website | clarifai |
Clarifai Inc. is a company focused on artificial intelligence, specializing in computer vision by utilizing machine learning and deep neural networks to interpret images and video content.
The company’s headquarters are located in Wilmington, Delaware, with additional offices situated in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., New York City, Tallinn, Estonia, as well as locations in Canada and India.
History
Established in 2013 by Matthew Zeiler, a Ph.D. candidate noted for ranking in the top five of the 2013 ImageNet Challenge, Clarifai initially provided both free and subscription-based APIs for image and video recognition, alongside a consumer application named Forevery. Its inaugural commercial partnership was with Style Me Pretty, a wedding lifestyle platform that utilized Clarifai’s technology to deliver customized image suggestions.
In 2016, the company introduced version 2 of its API, which added features such as custom model training and enhanced visual search functionality. That same year, Clarifai secured $30 million in funding to accelerate expansion. By 2017, research efforts were centralized in San Francisco, whereas government-related projects were shifted to Washington D.C. Additionally, Clarifai launched a mobile SDK that enabled AI processing offline directly on devices. The following year saw the addition of an on-premises software product aimed at enterprise clients. In 2019, Clarifai broadened its international presence by establishing an office in Tallinn, Estonia.
Funding
Clarifai raised $10 million during its Series A round in 2015, led by Union Square Ventures (USV). After releasing their v2 API in 2016, the company attracted $30 million in Series B financing led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from USV, Lux Capital, and Osage University Partners. In October 2021, Clarifai completed a $60 million Series C round spearheaded by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), involving both returning and new investors such as CPP Investment Board and NextEquity Partners. This brought total investment capital to $100 million, fueling further product innovation and business scaling.
Technology
Clarifai’s platform is founded on convolutional neural network architectures inspired by founder Matthew Zeiler’s doctoral research. This technology enables the system to learn from large datasets and accurately annotate images and videos. The company offers solutions including content moderation, visual search capabilities, similarity matching, and media management tools. It provides pre-trained recognition models tailored to specific categories such as food, travel destinations, and NSFW content, alongside a general-purpose model capable of detecting objects, concepts, and emotions. Users can also develop custom models for niche identification tasks like distinguishing vehicle makes or dog breeds. The 2018 Model 1.5 leverages machine-labeled datasets to identify up to 11,000 distinct concepts, strengthening Clarifai’s position in AI-powered visual recognition services.
Clients
By 2017, Clarifai had approximately 100 clients spanning various industries, including prominent companies like Unilever, Ubisoft, and BuzzFeed, as well as organizations within the medical device and drone sectors.
Military work
In 2018, CEO Matthew Zeiler disclosed Clarifai’s participation in Project Maven, an artificial intelligence program initiated by the US Department of Defense. This announcement came after reports surfaced of a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former employee who alleged dismissal following her request for transparency regarding a 2017 server breach impacting the Pentagon and other clients. Zeiler clarified that the breach was confined to "an isolated research server" and that affected parties were notified subsequent to an external security examination. Early in 2019, some staff members voiced ethical concerns about the use of Clarifai’s AI technology, reflecting wider industry discussions about responsible AI development and deployment practices.