MarqVision Secures $48 Million for AI-Powered Brand Control

US startup MarqVision has completed a $48 million second-round financing that will be used to roll out its AI-based engine for detecting and removing counterfeit and pirated goods across online platforms.

The Los Angeles-based company – first set up in 2020 to apply computer vision technology to fight trademark infringements – has now raised $90 million from investors.

MarqVision competes against the likes of Red Points, BrandShield, BrandMonitor, SnapDragon and Incopro, but claims its brand protection platform goes a step further to become 'brand control' – which it defines as ‘owning every digital and physical touchpoint where a brand lives’.

MarqVision says that combining AI agents with IP legal expertise translates to more effective enforcement operations, which, according to the company, results in a 5-10% increase in topline growth that justifies spending 0.5-1% of online revenue on digital risk protection.

The AI technology developed by MarqVision for counterfeit detection is called Atomic Product Detections™. Instead of treating a product as one ‘whole image’ to match against a database, Atomic Product Detections breaks a product down into its smallest recognisable ‘atoms’, which consist of visual and textual components like logos, stitching patterns, security features such as holograms, and colour schemes. Each atom then forms part of a detection unit deployed across online marketplaces, social media, and other channels, to search for counterfeits that share enough of the atoms.