The most trusted provider of computer vision algorithms to military, law enforcement, and commercial organizations in the United States is making a new home for their East Coast headquarters here in Morgantown.
The Colorado-based company, Rank One Computing, may be best known for its flagship product which was a software development kit (SDK) built for face recognition, Rank One CEO Scott Swann said.
“However we’ve grown quite a bit beyond that,” he said. “Now we provide a range of computer vision services to support the detection of a lot of different types of objects, as well as matching those objects or faces to be able to provide enterprise systems for law enforcement and public safety community service.”
Swann said the company also has a huge program called “identity proofing” on the commercial side of the business.
“You’ve probably used it, where you take a picture of your driver’s license, then a picture of yourself, a selfie, to verify you are a real person and then you get some kind of service based off of that,” Swann explained. “We offer quite a business through FinTech and cybersecurity.
Rank One will be joining the ranks alongside a diverse community of businesses at the West Virginia University John Chambers College of Business and Economics Vantage Ventures building on University Ave.
WVU President Gordon Gee spoke at the ribbon cutting ceremony on Friday afternoon, pointing out it is companies like Rank One that will continue moving the state forward.
“We’re finding opportunities for West Virginians to return home,” Gee said. “This is West Virginia’s time – we can fuel our future through innovation and technology.”
Swann is one of those West Virginians returning home – and bringing business and jobs with him.
“Selfishly speaking, I’m from here,” Swann said. “So I love pushing the jobs back to West Virginia.
“We love the idea of standing up our East Coast operations in West Virginia,” he said. “It is close enough to Washington, D.C. – you could get there in a few hours.”
Swann also believes this will be an easy place for him to recruit great talent.
“I just believe it’s a little bit of a hidden secret here to stand up the East Coast operations in West Virginia,” he said. “The quality of people, the retention of those people, and just the proximity makes a lot of sense.”
Swann said the company will undoubtedly bring at least 10 high paying tech jobs to the area initially and that number will “hopefully be much, much larger” in years to come as there is currently a growth spurt within the company, he said.
Vantage Ventures Executive Director Sarah Billings recognized the significance of housing a business, in so short of time, with “such great importance to our national security, to our efficiency and the way we use digital tools, and the criticality of how the next generation economy will fall.”
Swann said Rank One prides itself by operating with a lot of integrity and really believes in the uses for artificial intelligence and face recognition technologies.
“It’s very important to us, but we do know that it’s just as valuable to public safety, law enforcement, and protecting consumers and the way that they operate in their everyday lives – and it’s something that we can make a difference in,” Swann said. “It’s also an area where there’s not a lot of U.S. based technologies, and we want to build these U.S. based technologies here in West Virginia.”
