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Enable Ventures Announces Lead Investment in Series A+ Financing Round in Be My Eyes: A Leading AI-Driven Accessibility-tech Company

Enable Ventures Announces Lead Investment in Series A+ Financing Round in Be My Eyes: A Leading AI-Driven Accessibility-tech Company

Be My Eyes, Enable’s Latest Investment in Inclusive Tech Innovation, Leverages Computer Vision and Generative AI To Dictate and Audio Describe the World to the Blind and Low-Vision Community

Washington, D.C. – January 22, 2025 – Enable Ventures, the first impact venture fund dedicated to closing the disability wealth gap while achieving competitive, market-rate returns, today announced that it has closed on the lead investment in the Be My Eyes Series A+ round of financing. Alongside other A+ round investors like ECMC, as well as non-dilutive capital from multiple enterprise partners, the total amount raised is $6.1 million. Be My Eyes is a leading AI-driven visual interpreter company that leverages computer vision and generative AI to audio describe the world to the blind and low vision (BLV) community.


"It is with great pride that Enable Ventures has led the Series A+ investment round into Be My Eyes,” said Regina “Gina” Kline, Founder and Managing Partner of Enable Ventures. “Be My Eyes is an excellent example of how highly innovative, inclusive-tech companies are pushing AI-innovation into new frontiers, and these are the kinds of companies that we invest in and champion at Enable. Be My Eyes has attracted large corporate customers and partners who recognize that this is next level technology that derives its power from its rich training data reflective of authentic blind user experiences. What’s more, Be My Eyes has created a resonant product with its end-users while establishing one of the largest data sets in the world of blind user experiences.”


Giving people who are blind or have low-vision Barrier-Free Access to Information; Uplifting Autonomy, Productivity and Freedom at Work and in the Community

Be My Eyes connects blind and low-vision individuals to an on-demand mobile or desktop experience to provide visual assistance that includes AI-generated and precisely narrated descriptions of the world. The technology tells people what the room looks like, what the expression is on someone’s face, where there is an open chair in the audience, or what the text is on a sign, board, or restaurant menu.


The company’s first of its kind app harnesses the power of generosity, technology, and human connection so that people who are blind or have low vision have more accessible ways to engage with a world that is often built inaccessibly. Through its solutions, the company drives inclusivity for blind students, workers, and citizens, on-demand and in real-time, by connecting the user with AI-powered visual interpretation and a global network of more than 8 million sighted individuals. The platform allows volunteers to provide live descriptions to blind and low vision users through a live one-way video two-way audio connection to tackle inaccessible parts of everyday life.


“We are thrilled to have closed on our Series A+ round and are grateful to Enable Ventures for taking the lead in this financing round as well as for the integrity, network of relationships and authenticity that they bring,” said Mike Buckley, CEO of Be My Eyes. “Like us, Gina and her team recognize the immense commercial possibilities of inclusive AI, while balancing that focus with a genuine commitment to inclusive communities and value creation. Enable already has a track record of identifying cutting-edge innovators with game-changing AI innovations like Be My Eyes. I am certain that they will be valuable partners of ours for the longer-term.”


In the Spring of 2023, Be My Eyes announced the launch of Be My AI™, a state-of-the-art visual interpretation tool powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 vision model. Companies such as Microsoft, through their Disability Answer Desk, can now handle all types of customer service calls using Be My AI™. Highly complex user requests on everything from Excel spreadsheet formulas and product requests, to rebooting a laptop or installing and updating software, can now be resolved without any human intervention. The business impact has been dramatically faster resolution times, higher customer satisfaction levels, and the ability to handle a larger volume of calls without adding cost.


In 2024, Be My Eyes also launched formal partnerships with several organizations including Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta. Be My Eyes is the first and only official Accessibility-tech (a11y-tech) partner available on the Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, following extensive co-development work between the two companies.


Kline added: “Be My Eyes' technology has the potential to drive changes across the tech sector and for blind and low vision customers at work, school, and in the community. This should bring great optimism for all those who envision a future for AI where we center the needs of humanity at the core of technological development."


Be My Eyes has one of the largest data sets in the world of blind user interactions, and lived experiences of inaccessibility, collected during millions of video calls with human volunteers. In the summer of 2024, it announced that it would be providing this data to AI vendors to train their Large Language Models (“LLMs”) in the authentic lived experiences of people who are blind people or have low-vision. It did so only after consulting with their user community and in a desire to steer LLMs to be much more inclusive in their outlook.


Recognized as an innovator and leader in AI technology for blind and low-vision people, Be My Eyes is taking steps to ensure that its more than 750,000 blind and low-vision users and the global blind and low-vision community in general is not left out of the innovative power of AI, and that future AI models do not develop with an inherent bias against them, but rather reflect the lived experiences of blind and low-vision people.


About Enable Ventures
Enable Ventures is the first impact venture capital firm designed to the close the disability wealth gap through market rate investment. The company sources, attracts, and invests in world class inclusive tech impact deals with a focus on AI innovation, and partners with its portfolio companies to scale impact as they scale revenue. Enable Ventures is committed to demonstrating through its category-defining investment strategy, that disability tech has the potential to create measurable impact and financial alpha while changing the way technology is made from the outset. Founded and led by Regina “Gina” Kline, the investor, entrepreneur, and civil rights lawyer and supported by SmartJob, a platform to attract disability deal flow and support and build the disability innovation ecosystem, Enable Ventures is part of the Sorenson Impact Platform of Funds and is backed by world-renowned entrepreneur, business leader, and societal innovator Jim Sorenson and Sorenson Impact’s vast, world-class experience in impact and market-rate investment. For more information, please visit www.enableventures.vc.


Media Contact:

Cindy Stoller

Confluence Partners

917-331-0418

cstoller@confluencepartners.com

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