Ximilar in Media

Michal Lukac, CEO and machine learning engineer at Ximilar, joins host Jake Smith to talk about how we use Intel Xeon Scalable processors and the Intel OpenVINO toolkit to increase performance and lower latency for the company’s computer vision platform.

The two discuss the many applications for image recognition and visual search in a variety of industries, and how Ximilar has benefited from being a part of the Intel AI Builders program.

Has the demand for Visual AI changed during the Covid-19 pandemic? What were the lessons learned, and which tools did we use to stay efficient? Startup.info interviewed Ximilar’s founder David Novák in a series called Innovators vs. Covid-19.

What are we building and how? What was the biggest challenge so far and what strategies work the best for us?

Top Tier Startups interviewed David on both the challenges and accomplishments of an image-processing startup in a market dominated by tech giants.

David Novák was a researcher at Masaryk University, where he did a PhD on similarity-based data mining before founding Ximilar. He was able to combine his academic research and experience in the field with machine learning methods to build a cutting-edge visual AI platform.

“I enjoyed my research work at FI MU very much, I was absorbed in it and I devoted all my time and concentration to it. However, over time, I found that I wanted to see the results of my research work in practice.”

“When you look for a shirt on Glami, you are automatically offered several similar items from various vendors. The shoppers don’t have to go through one e-shop after another and look for similar goods since they are automatically provided with alternatives, thanks to the Czech company Ximilar.

The startup from Brno processes image data using artificial intelligence, which, among other things, allows e-shops to offer similar products. Their services are used by companies around the world, and, in addition to e-commerce, it is also used in medicine, industry, or security systems.“

David founded the company in 2017 with his diploma student, following up their cooperation in the research of machine learning-based processing of images.

Now, it boasts around 5,000 users, out of which 100 are B2B clients in more than 20 countries, mainly large e-shops, aggregators and e-commerce marketplaces. Their customers are brands like Mall Group, Novozymes, Verisure or SFR, and business partner companies like IBM or NVIDIA.

“When Arthur Samuel of IBM invented the concept of machine learning in 1959, David Novák was not even born. Fifty years later, a story of Ximilar began in Brno. They operate in the field of machine learning, and they’re doing great.”

Read an interview in which David explains not only what artificial intelligence can do, but also about BRNOmycity, the South Moravian Innovation Centre, or the SME Instrument Brno program.