For approximately $125 million, the American parking lot operator Metropolis purchased Oosto, formerly known as AnyVision. Instead of using cash, Metropolis shares were used for the majority of the purchase. This is a disappointing conclusion for a business that raised an astounding $352 million and attracted a lot of interest.
Qualcomm, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SoftBank's Vision Fund 2, which contributed $25 million and will recoup its investment, are among the company's biggest investors. The transaction comes after Oosto, which presently generates an estimated $10 million in revenue annually, failed to successfully commercialize its facial recognition technology. Currently run by Avi Golan, who was hired by SoftBank, the company employs just a few dozen people in Israel and overseas, compared to more than 200 at its height.
Metropolis, the purchasing business, is a privately held parking lot operator with headquarters in the United States that wants to incorporate cutting-edge technologies into its payment processing systems. Eldridge Industries, a longtime investor in AnyVision and a shareholder in Metropolis, seems to have coordinated the acquisition. Metropolis was also a start-up until recently, having raised a similar amount to AnyVision. Eldridge led the financing of the $1.7 billion acquisition of a rival in late 2023, which was a major step for the company. Today, Metropolis uses its in-house technology to run about 4,000 parking facilities and employs 20,000 people.
In order to develop facial recognition technology for a variety of applications, Professors Neil Robertson and Shlomo Ben-Artzi, along with Eylon Etshtein, created AnyVision in 2015. The business immediately became well-known, raised a significant amount of money, and, in its 2019 Series A round, was valued at $500 million. The business raised $235 million in a Series C round headed by SoftBank and Eldridge Industries in 2021, which at the time appeared to establish it as a market leader.
After it was revealed that its technology had been used to spy on Palestinians in the West Bank, AnyVision found it difficult to repair the harm to its reputation, even with its substantial fundraising efforts. The accusations caused Microsoft's investment arm, M12, to pull out of the business, despite the fact that they were never proven. As a result of this dispute, the company changed its name to Oosto. Over time, further significant investors withdrew as well, including the investment arm of the German corporation Bosch.
Oosto has made an effort in recent years to concentrate on the financial industry, landing deals with significant customers such as Citibank. The company, however, consistently reduced its workers and failed to produce a substantial amount of money. The latest transaction indicates that even SoftBank came to the conclusion that Oosto could not be sustained as an independent organization, despite the fact that SoftBank appointed Avi Golan as CEO in an attempt to turn the company around.
