The people
What they build
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Working at Metaspectral
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On the TechVancouver stage
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About
Metaspectral started life as PixelDrive. In October 2018 Migel Tissera and Francis Doumet took it to the TechVancouver stage and dragged photos into a browser: a convolutional network trained in TensorFlow compressed an 11 MB image to 583 KB — about 5% — with no loss of resolution, and the pair explained that the higher the resolution, the higher the compression factor. The company behind it was MLVX Technologies, for "machine learning visual experience"; Tissera's compression work came out of his PhD, which tailored compression to the specific type of input rather than using a generic formula. Video was the eventual target, photos were the tractable first step, and on stage they said an enterprise API was next and that they were hiring for sales. In 2019 the company rebranded to Compression.ai and opened the platform to developers through that API. In 2020, after NVIDIA called it a real-life Pied Piper, the defence and space sectors came asking about multispectral and hyperspectral data, and the company became Metaspectral. It raised a $4.7M seed round in November 2022 from SOMA Capital, Acequia Capital, the Government of Canada and angels including Jude Gomila and Alan Rutledge, and now sells Clarity, which identifies materials and their composition from spectral imagery for recycling recovery, earth observation and emissions monitoring.
Backers
SOMA Capital, Acequia Capital, the Government of Canada, and angels including Jude Gomila and Alan Rutledge · $4.7M seed (Nov 2022)
Quick answers
What does Metaspectral do?
It turns hyperspectral imagery into material identification — reading what something is made of, and its composition and defects, from light outside what a normal camera or the human eye captures. Its Clarity products cover recycling recovery, earth observation and emissions monitoring.
What was PixelDrive?
Metaspectral's first product, demoed at TechVancouver in October 2018: drag a photo into the browser and a neural network compressed it to around 5% of its size without losing resolution. It became the Compression.ai developer API in 2019 before the company pivoted to spectral data.
Who founded it?
Migel Tissera and Francis Doumet, in 2018. Tissera, the CTO, did his PhD on neural networks for real-time edge computing; Doumet, the CEO, has an MBA from Wharton and a master's in engineering from Stanford.
How much has Metaspectral raised?
A $4.7M seed round announced in November 2022, from SOMA Capital, Acequia Capital, the Government of Canada and angel investors including Jude Gomila and Alan Rutledge.