Hakimo, An AI-Informed Physical Security Platform, Announces $4 Million Seed Round

Cybersecurity and physical security synergies become priority as employees return to office

Hakimo, an AI platform designed to bring cybersecurity-like tools to the physical security industry, has announced its seed funding. Founded by Stanford-trained engineers and funded by experienced venture capitalists with decades of experience in the space, Hakimo has entered the market at a moment when re-populated office campuses are most in need of new security solutions.

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As workplaces reopen and new on-premise schedules emerge to accommodate the health and safety concerns of employees post-pandemic, companies must now implement physical security measures that accommodate those flexible employee schedules and less organized office traffic. Where physical security has long relied on badges, cameras, and sign-in sheets, returning to work can now mean offset schedules that keep employees from recognizing who should be present on campus and the persisting trend in job shuffling means many new employees are indistinguishable from visitors or guests.

Hakimo brings in data from multiple disparate systems such as security cameras and badge readers and applies computer vision and data analytics techniques on top to enable companies to easily identify potential threats and vulnerabilities. Sam Joseph, the co-founder and CEO says that its ability to pull together this range of data and inputs makes Hakimo a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system for physical security.

“Cybersecurity systems used to generate massive numbers of events that a human analyst could not handle. Systems like SIEM and Security Orchestration and Response (SOAR) emerged to help manage and respond to those alerts and incidents. Physical security has now reached a point where it requires the same types of tools,” said Joseph.

One common security vulnerability that Hakimo solves is tailgating, the phenomenon where one person badges into a door, and another person sneaks in behind without presenting valid credentials. Hakimo uses computer vision to analyze camera footage corresponding to every badge event and correlates that with badging data to raise alerts in real time. Hakimo goes a step further and provides ways to bring about behavior change in employees through automated email alerts and gamification tools.

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“Employees need to recognize that the flow of people through the building is different now and that they play a role in its security,” Joseph said. “Learning that someone snuck in behind you today and seeing that data tied to your badge can trigger a higher level of vigilance as you badge in tomorrow.”

The company already has deployments at multiple well-known enterprises and has analyzed more than half a million security events so far.

“Hakimo is unique because it can integrate with legacy enterprise systems a company has in place without having to install any new hardware. Its broad suite of integrations which makes deployments easy and fast,” said Joseph.

Hakimo’s founding team has a deep background in artificial intelligence with Stanford-trained engineers and experience from Amazon and Rubrik. Co-founders Joseph and Sagar Honnungar are encouraged by the success of the company’s first round of funding led by Neotribe Ventures. The oversubscribed round saw participation from defy.vc, Firebolt Ventures and prominent angels such as Ameet Patel, Prasanna Srikhanta, and Stanford professor Sachin Katti.

“Corporate focus has long been on cybersecurity and protection of data. As cybersecurity professionals now focus on operational technology as a gateway for hacks and data loss (such as the incident at NASA JPL caused by a Raspberry Pi), protecting physical infrastructure from unauthorized entry becomes equally important,” Joseph said. “That’s what Hakimo does. Artificial intelligence provides the analysis so that human intelligence can make necessary changes to keep the enterprise safe.”

Hakimo is a technology company that builds a smart monitoring platform powered by artificial intelligence for corporate security teams. Hakimo was founded by AI researchers from Stanford University and is funded by top Silicon Valley venture capital firms. For more details, visit www.hakimo.ai or contact info@hakimo.ai.

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