Steg.AI receives $5M to Expand its AI Watermarking Technology
Funding Round Info:
Steg.AI has just announced a $5 million A round led by Paladin Capital Group, with participation from Washington Square Angels, the NYU Innovation Venture Fund, and angel investors, Alexander Lavin, Eli Adler, Brian Early and Chen-Ping Yu. Steg.AI is set to further develop and expand its watermarking technology, potentially becoming an industry standard and contributing to the ongoing research on detecting AI-generated media.
About Steg.AI:
Steg.AI offers an innovative solution enabling creators to apply undetectable watermarks that resist transformations and re-encoding. This plays a crucial role in fighting online intellectual property theft and providing proof of authorship for human-created or AI-generated content. With years of dedicated work, Steg.AI, led by co-founders Eric Wengrowski and Kristin Dana, who possess extensive academic research experience, has developed a highly effective watermarking technology. This technology remains intact even after resizing, compression, screenshotting, and metadata deletion. Notably, it can be easily scanned from electronic displays or printouts using an iPhone camera. The process employs machine learning models to personalize the watermark for each image. The encoding algorithm strategically modifies the image in a way imperceptible to humans but easily detectable by the decoding algorithm. This results in an invisible watermark functioning like an unchangeable QR code, capable of embedding substantial data such as URLs or hashes.
About Paladin Capital Group:
Paladin Capital Group stands as a prominent global investor, fostering the development of the world's most innovative companies through venture investment, expansion, and growth capital. The company's headquarters are based in Washington, DC, with additional offices in London, Luxembourg, New York City, and Silicon Valley. Diverse investment opportunities across the US and worldwide are actively pursued. The organization has earned a leadership position in investing in technologies, products, and services with a dual-use focus, applicable to both commercial and governmental markets, while fostering a strong value-add culture.