Veritone Inc. President Ryan Steelberg sees further opportunities for working with Microsoft, following an agreement to put the Costa Mesa company’s aiWARE artificial intelligence operating system on the computer giant’s Azure Government cloud platform.
Azure provides government agencies a secure means to store data and workloads in the cloud, with customers at the U.S. federal, state and local level along with their partners.
“It’s taken several months, but we finally got it into full production, and obviously tapping into their thousands of potential sellers both domestically and internationally is very exciting for us,” Steelberg told the Business Journal after the Microsoft deal was announced on Sept. 11.
Steelberg—whose company has built one of the world’s first operating systems for artificial intelligence—declined to speculate on the potential revenue implications for his company (Nasdaq: VERI).
The company has a market value of about $85 million.
“Given Microsoft’s cloud dominance in the government sector, we are extremely excited about the opportunities this collaboration opens up,” Steelberg said. “As state and federal agencies across the country continue to modernize their IT infrastructure, many of them are already on Azure Government.”
Police Uses
Microsoft clients on its Azure platform can use aiWARE to gain insights from their huge datasets with speed and scale. One possible use, for instance, is helping police investigators manage video, audio, and photo materials to ID suspects in their cases.
The available applications also include those that allow investigators to withhold sensitive details before information is made public and to analyze massive amounts of information.
Kirk Arthur Sr., director of worldwide public safety and justice at Microsoft, said in the initial announcement earlier this month that the collaboration with Veritone allows government customers to tap into the latest innovations in AI, as well as future applications resulting from the collaboration.
“We’ve been a client of theirs on a very limited basis for Azure. This is the first time that we’re launching a larger partnership together,” said Steelberg, whose brother Chad Steelberg is the company’s chief executive.
He said expanded uses and deployments are possible within police agencies.
“We’re thrilled with the potential launch opportunity here,” according to Steelberg. “We’ve been working with over 30 different police agencies kind of across the country now for the past nine months.”
Overall, Steelberg said, Veritone’s business is strong with record revenues last quarter.
“We’re very bullish on the growth prospects of the company both mid-term and long-term,” he said.
