With consumers becoming increasingly reliant on online channels to secure goods, they no longer have the ability to inspect items for defects at the time of purchase. This burden now falls onto the manufacturer and distributor, resulting in an increased focus on quality control. Advancements in AI and connectivity allow manufacturers to now implement solutions at the factory level to optimize manufacturing efficiency. Elementary is an automated quality assurance platform that leverages AI and cameras to provide visual inspections for manufacturers to detect defects early. The platform is adaptable and uses no-code AI so that inspections can be adaptable and customized to specific use cases; AI-based vision yields 90% more defect detections and can be deployed in less than 30 minutes. The implementation of a machine vision solution also allows manufacturers to drive quality, eliminate wastage, identify problem areas, and reduce the possibility of returns while optimizing operational processes. With supply chain constraints across the globe, Elementary also provides reassurance and peace of mind to importers and brands that are now waiting months for goods in transit that may not be able to be sold upon local inspection.
LA TechWatch caught up with Elementary Founder and CEO Arye Barnehama to learn more about how Elementary’s technology is making the supply chain more resilient and efficient, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
The $30M Series B investment was led by Tiger Global joined by existing investors including Threshold Ventures, Fika Ventures, Fathom Capital, Riot VC, and Toyota Ventures. This brings our total capital raised to $47.5M.
Tell us about your product or service.
Elementary is focused on enabling manufacturers to ship the highest quality products to their customers. Our product enables manufacturing teams to inspect and protect their production line with AI visual inspection that helps detect defects, assembly, errors, foreign material, and more. Our cloud platform transforms all of this data into insights and analytics to improve manufacturing processes. We enable best-in-class manufacturers to ship flawless products to their customers worldwide.
What inspired the start of Elementary?
I previously built and sold a wearable tech company. With that company, I lived in Shenzhen China bringing up production lines and manufactured and shipped thousands of units of hardware. We sold that company and I then worked in augmented reality for industrial use cases.
I founded Elementary to bring machine learning to life on the factory floor. Elementary has been working on AI and automation since 2017. The company has worked with many of the world’s best manufacturers, learning about what drives automation, quality, and manufacturing improvements for them. Growing with our customers, Elementary has built an AI-vision platform for quality and inspection. The camera platform offers easy-to-train ML models for anomaly detection, part classification, barcode recognition, OCR, and a growing list of manufacturing-centric AI features.
How is it different?
Previously, our industry had camera systems that are expensive hardware solutions, with complex and rigid software.
Elementary empowers our customers with the power of no-code AI to simply teach our system an inspection, machine learning that enables much more flexible inspections than ever before possible, and cloud analytics to drive insights and improvements.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
Elementary is built for manufacturers ranging from consumer goods, to food and beverage, to automotive. Manufacturing is 11% of the US GDP and 16% globally. This industry powers the creation of the physical goods we use every day.
What’s your business model?
Elementary sells cameras and computers able to run the AI inspections on the edge and a subscription to our no-code AI software platform.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
Elementary has offices in LA (South Pasadena), Mexico City, MX, and we continue to grow our remote workforce. We work with physical goods so there’s an aspect to our business that often needs to be done in person. At the same time, the team has been incredible about taking a hybrid-remote approach to our work and we’ve created an extremely strong culture around how to be our most productive.
We work with physical goods so there’s an aspect to our business that often needs to be done in person. At the same time, the team has been incredible about taking a hybrid-remote approach to our work and we’ve created an extremely strong culture around how to be our most productive.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We will continue to scale our platform alongside the world’s best manufacturers and continue to innovate and push the industry forward. To do so, Elementary will be working to double the team over the next six months. We’ve got a bunch of job openings on our website
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Based on customer demand, this round will enable Elementary to scale our platform to existing and new manufacturing customers worldwide. To scale up to demand the company is hiring and growing sales, implementation, and customer success teams, alongside continuing to grow our engineering and product development.
Where is the best place in LA to watch the sunset?
Wherever my puppy Linus and wife Laura are.
