OH.io has added CVAT, an open-source AI data labeling company, to its portfolio. Its sister company, OH.io Capital, invested $2 million. The deal pairs capital with a Columbus, Ohio-based team that will handle marketing, sales, and community work, mainly to speed CVAT's growth in North America. Initial target markets include manufacturing quality assurance, robotics, geospatial AI, precision agriculture, and food equipment. CVAT's platform labels image, video, audio, and 3D point cloud data used to train AI systems. It began as an Intel project in 2017 and became independent in 2022. Its free CVAT Community product has more than 17,000 GitHub stars and 3 million downloads. "Partnering with OH.io will give CVAT the sales and marketing muscle to reach companies that don't yet know how our technology can help them," said chief executive officer Nikita Manovich.

OH.io partners with CVAT to accelerate growth of the open-source data labeling platform to train AI at scale. COLUMBUS, Ohio-(BUSINESS WIRE)-OH.io, the first-of-its-kind go-to-market performance venture firm, and CVAT, the open-source platform for labeling image, video, 3D point cloud, and audio data at scale to train artificial intelligence, today announced a partnership that brings CVAT into the OH.io portfolio. CVAT will receive dedicated sales and marketing support, along with a $2 million investment from OH.io Capital, OH.io's sister company. OH.io will deploy a Columbus-based go-to-market team for CVAT, starting with a focus on manufacturing quality assure and machine vision, robotics, physical-world inspection, geospatial AI, precision agriculture, and food equipment. Share CVAT started as an internal tool at Intel in 2017 and became an independent company in 2022. The technology is available as CVAT Community, the free open-source version teams host themselves, and CVAT Online, a cloud-based version. CVAT Community has more than 17,000 stars on GitHub and more than 3 million downloads, and is widely used in computer vision projects. OH.io will deploy a Columbus-based team to lead marketing, sales outreach, and community programs for CVAT, starting with a focus on manufacturing quality assurance and machine vision, robotics, physical-world inspection, geospatial AI, precision agriculture, and food equipment. "CVAT has grown into one of the most widely used tools of its kind largely through word of mouth," said Nikita Manovich, Co-founder & CEO of CVAT. "Partnering with OH.io will give CVAT the sales and marketing muscle to reach companies that don't yet know how our technology can help them, while allowing our team to stay focused on improving the software." Organizations across a growing range of fields already rely on CVAT: * The Department of Urology at the University of Illinois Chicago, one of the earliest adopters of single-port robotic surgery, uses CVAT to train AI that recognizes anatomy in real time during robotic procedures. * Dragonfly AI, which measures how well product packaging and ads grab attention, uses CVAT to mark the key parts of video ads that feed its measurement technology. * Automakers and their suppliers use CVAT to teach driver-assistance systems to recognize lane markings and other vehicles. * Energy and utility companies use it to spot defects on solar panels, power lines, and pipelines in drone and camera footage. * Mapping companies and city planners use it to outline buildings, roads, and land use in aerial images. * Logistics companies use it to train warehouse robots and cameras to find packages, read labels, and avoid obstacles. Under the new partnership, OH.io will develop and run CVAT's go-to-market plan, including attracting new users, growing the CVAT Online user base, expanding enterprise partnerships and speeding up CVAT's growth in the North American market. "The next wave of AI won't be limited to screens. It will be found in robots, vehicles, and factories, and every one of those machines first has to learn to see," said Ratmir Timashev, Founder of OH.io. "CVAT already has a product and community that engineers love. OH.io's job is to get it in front of every company that needs it." About CVAT CVAT is an open-source platform that helps teams label image, video, audio, and 3D point cloud data to train AI at scale. Available as the open-source CVAT Community and the cloud-hosted CVAT Online, it is used by companies, universities, and research institutes worldwide. Learn more at www.cvat.ai. About OH.io OH.io is a performance venture founded in Columbus, Ohio, by Ratmir Timashev, co-founder of Veeam Software. OH.io embeds experienced sales and marketing operators directly into fast-growing AI startups so founders can focus on their product while sharing in the risk of scaling. Learn more at www.oh.io.