Vicarious (company)

Vicarious was an American artificial intelligence company. It was based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. The company worked on creating software that could think and learn in ways similar to the human brain.

In 2022, the company was bought by Alphabet Inc. and became part of Alphabet’s robotics group called Intrinsic.

 Founders 
Vicarious was founded in 2010 by D. Scott Phoenix and Dileep George. Before starting Vicarious, Phoenix worked as an entrepreneur and technology executive. George previously worked as Chief Technology Officer at the AI company Numenta while completing his studies at Stanford University.

 Funding 
The company received early funding from technology investors and venture capital firms. In 2012, Vicarious raised $15 million in a funding round led by Good Ventures and Founders Fund.

In 2014, the company raised $40 million in additional funding. Investors in this round included Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.

Later, the company also received investments from Jeff Bezos, Jerry Yang, and Marc Benioff.

 Technology 
Vicarious worked on machine learning systems based on ideas from how the human brain processes information. One of its main projects was called the Recursive Cortical Network (RCN). This system was designed to understand images and videos in a way similar to human vision.

In 2013, Vicarious announced that its software could solve many modern CAPTCHA tests used on websites. The company said this showed that its vision technology was becoming more advanced.

The company later published research about its technology in the scientific journal Science.

 See also 
 Artificial intelligence
 Computer vision

 References 

Category:2010 establishments in the United States