Loko AI, a growing Newport Beach surveillance software company with ties to several notable OC execs, last month partnered with Raleigh, N.C.-based supply chain consulting firm Tompkins Solutions.
The deal provides Tompkins with Loko AI’s platform, Caretaker, which offers a suite of AI software and camera sensors that monitors unauthorized or unsafe activity at workplaces such as ports, docks and warehouses.
“In a traditional video surveillance system, the cameras are just passively watching and recording to a hard drive,” Loko AI Chief Executive Joseph Zaki told the Business Journal. “It’s up to the security guard to go through that or to be there at the exact moment an event occurs.”
By contrast, Loko AI’s technology can automatically detect, for instance, a trespasser, and immediately alert employees with a video clip of the incident. The company’s technology is also used to prevent and detect workplace accidents and injuries.
“The kinds of injuries that happen on the docks are catastrophic,” Zaki said. “So, we always maintain that the most dangerous environments should be monitored by autonomous software.”
Other benefits of Loko AI’s Caretaker include increased workplace efficiency. The software can detect patterns in workplace vehicle movement, tracking containers and goods flowing from the port to the warehouse, to help companies in the supply chain optimize their workflow.
Hollywood Background
Zaki founded Loko AI in 2017, shortly after he received a frantic call from a friend attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas.
“I heard gunshots going off in the background and screaming,” he said.
To his relief, Zaki’s friends survived the mass shooting, although it took the lives of 58 people and injured more than 850. The shooter took his own life shortly after committing the massacre.
Zaki channeled his grief and anger over the shooting to start a company that focused on safety and risk management, which eventually became Loko AI. He ended his 20-year visual effects career in Hollywood, after working on over 30 films, including “Interstellar” and “Life of Pi,” to go all in on starting current entrepreneurial venture. Zaki previously founded and led Vrtuality, a VR studio that sought to transform film-grade visual effects technology into immerse VR experiences.
Ware Malcomb, ViewSonic
Loko AI backers include Larry Armstrong, chairman and former CEO of Irvine-based architectural firm Ware Malcomb. Armstrong is a backer and adviser to Loko AI along with Jeff Volpe, president of Brea-based audiovisual giant ViewSonic Americas.
Loko AI, which counts 13 employees, has raised over $3 million to date.
It’s expanding beyond helping supply chain-related companies, working with the U.S. Air Force and with some local police departments.
