Amsterdam University spin-out Euvision Technologies is acquired by Qualcomm.
Euvision Technologies, a software development company spun-out of Amsterdam University, has been acquired by Qualcomm, a US-based semiconductor and mobile phone chip specialist.
Euvision, spun out five years ago, creates image analysis software which runs on a mobile phone and is able to discern the content of an image. It can detect if a photograph shows, for example, a person, a table, or car – and even the make of a car. Based on that analysis, it can then organise the photos into albums and categories.
The original research was conducted at Amsterdam’s Informatics Institute, and was led by Arnold Smeulders and Cees Snoek.
Financial or other details of the acquisition have not been disclosed by either company.
Arnold Smeulders said: “Ten years ago, the American National Institute of Standards and Technology launched a worldwide competition to see who could design the best and smartest image search engine. With our research solutions, right from the start we were in the top three of the international competition. More and more universities began to join, including Oxford and Carnegie Mellon University, alongside the research departments of large companies like IBM and Microsoft. But even then we managed to hold onto our leading position, and our automatic image recognition software kept getting better every year.”
