HyperSpectral Announces $8.5M Series A Funding to Accelerate Deployment of Spectral Artificial Intelligence Software

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — HyperSpectral, an AI-powered spectral intelligence company with hardware-agnostic solutions for particle detection, emerged from stealth with $8.5 million in a Series A funding round. HyperSpectral's Series A round was co-led by RRE Ventures and  Kibo Ventures with participation from Correlation Ventures, and GC&H Investments. The funds will allow the company to ramp up development of the technology, hire key talent and create wider AI datasets through lab partnerships and testing.

The company has garnered significant interest from multiple industry sectors, with food safety and healthcare being among the most important. In the food safety sector, Case Western Reserve University and the Safe Food Alliance are key partners. This interest has led the company to initiate several pilot programs in these industries. Additionally, the company has secured a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to help develop defense applications for this technology.

"This funding will accelerate our go-to-market strategy for our unique spectral AI technology with real-world applications in food and beverage safety, health care and more industry sectors," said Matt Theurer, co-founder and CEO of HyperSpectral, "We are excited to prove to the world that our technology not only works but is faster and cheaper than traditional lab testing, allowing farmers, food processors and physicians to get instant results with a quick scan."

HyperSpectral's technology utilizes spectroscopy to measure the unique absorption and emission of light from different sources and artificial intelligence trained on large custom created datasets to recognize different particle spectroscopy signatures in the real world. While the technology has a vast number of applications, HyperSpectral's focus is on revolutionizing how the agricultural and medical industries detect dangerous pathogens such as E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria, Staph aureus and others.

Traditional testing for pathogens is a time-consuming process where farmers and physicians have to ship samples to specialty testing labs to be analyzed. When using HyperSpectral's software platform and standard third-party hardware, users will be able to conduct these tests onsite in minutes with a quick, non-intrusive scan, allowing for radically faster threat detection, according to the company.

"HyperSpectral is massively improving the speed and accuracy of food safety testing through the power of computer vision and AI," said Will Porteous, general partner at RRE Ventures. "This is just the first of a number of significant market applications of this powerful technology."

"We have known part of the team for over seven years, before they founded Hyperspectral," said Juan Lopez, partner at Kibo Ventures. "They have demonstrated their capabilities as founders, with a proven track record of creating and scaling successful companies. We are thrilled to partner with them to unlock the power of spectral data using state-of-the-art AI and help them expand internationally."

The HyperSpectral team is led by:

• Co-Founder and CEO Matt Theurer, an entrepreneur who co-founded Virtustream, a cloud computing management software purchased by EMC Corp. for $1.2 billion
• Chief Medical Officer Dr. Adam Saltman, former CMO at ChemImage and medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration
• Chief Science Officer Erik Avaniss-Aghajani, Ph.D., former director of clinical diagnostics at Primex Clinical Laboratories
• Co-Founder and chief operating officer Lauren Stack, veteran operations and finance executive
• Chief Information Officer Vince Lubsey, a former co-founder of Virtustream and global technology leader
• Chief Product Officer Dr. Simi George, a veteran data scientist and product manager

"As a highly engaged member of the Peanut and Tree Nut Processors Association (PTNPA), Hyperspectral has quickly catapulted the topic of AI and how food safety solutions are becoming more data and AI driven in the food industry," said Jeannie Shaughnessy, CEO of the Peanut and Tree Nut Processors Association. "We are thrilled to watch their ongoing business successes."