What Is Coram AI and What Does It Do?

Most security cameras are basically expensive hard drives with a lens. They record. They store. And then nobody watches the footage until something goes wrong. By then, you are already behind.

Coram AI is built to fix that. The company uses generative AI to modernize security, enabling features like firearm detection, slip-and-fall alerts, and fast video search. But it is not just a feature upgrade on old software. The platform serves as an AI Safety Agent, giving businesses a comprehensive approach to security that covers video surveillance, access control, and emergency management.

The reality is, the physical security industry has been coasting on decade-old technology for far too long. Coram AI is one of the few companies actually rethinking what a camera system should do in 2025. Not just record. Think.

Who Founded Coram AI and When Was It Started?

Coram AI was founded by Ashesh Jain and Peter Ondruska, two AI researchers who spent years building systems that helped autonomous vehicles interpret their surroundings and avoid accidents. These are not your typical SaaS founders who pivoted from a spreadsheet tool.

Jain holds a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University, specializing in Machine Learning, Robotics, and Computer Vision, and started his career as a Research Scholar at Stanford before going on to lead the Autonomy and AI programme for self-driving cars at Lyft. Ondruska, co-founder and CTO, sold his Augmented Reality startup to Lyft in 2018 after completing a PhD in Robotics at Oxford University.

So when these two decided to leave Lyft in 2021 and build together again, people paid attention. The company was formally founded in 2022 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Their reasoning was simple: if AI can teach a car to read a scene and react in real time, there is no good reason a security camera should still be dumb.

How Does Coram AI Work with Existing Security Cameras?

Here is the kicker. Most AI security platforms make you throw out everything you already own before you see a single new feature. New cameras. New hardware. New contracts. Coram AI does none of that.

The platform works with any IP camera and takes only 10 minutes to deploy. A user can simply type what they are looking for, and Coram analyses all the recorded data to find it in seconds. No complicated setup. No ripping out infrastructure. You plug it in, connect your existing cameras, and it works.

Building on top of OpenAI’s open-source CLIP model, Coram delivers advanced image indexing and natural language image search. The clustering index is trained on Coram’s own customer data to provide better search performance versus the base model, creating a moat that deepens over time. The product can analyse video in real-time, detect objects, recognize faces, and identify suspicious activities or anomalies.

And the time savings are real. Work that previously took hours now takes minutes, according to the company. For any operations team managing a large facility, that shift alone is worth paying for.

How Much Funding Has Coram AI Raised?

The investors noticed early.

In January 2025, Coram AI secured $13.8 million in Series A funding led by Battery Ventures, with participation from existing investors 8VC and Mosaic Ventures. Battery Ventures partner Marcus Ryu, former co-founder and CEO of Guidewire Software, joined the board as part of that round. That is not a passive check. That is someone with serious operating experience betting on the team.

But it did not stop there. Coram AI has since raised $35 million in a Series B round co-led by Ansa Capital and Battery Ventures, with participation from UP.Partners, 8VC, and Mosaic Ventures, bringing total capital raised to $66 million.

Why are investors so interested? There are more than 500 million security cameras worldwide outside of China, yet most video recordings remain unseen on hard drives. That is an enormous amount of data generating zero value. Coram AI is positioning itself to change that, and the funding reflects exactly how large that opportunity looks to people writing big checks.

What Are the Key Features of Coram AI?

Let’s be honest. Most security platforms give you a live feed, some motion alerts, and a search bar that barely works. Coram AI is operating at a different level.

The platform offers firearm detection, slip-and-fall alerts, license plate recognition, facial recognition, natural language video search, and behavioral analytics. It also integrates with leading access control systems including Brivo, Openpath, and Mercury, and includes a comprehensive Emergency Management System for coordinating responses during critical incidents.

Then there is Deep Investigation. This feature uses long-running AI agents to automatically generate full reports across cameras and data, significantly reducing the need for manual review. Type what you want to find. Get a structured report back. No one sitting in a security room scrubbing footage at 2x speed.

Coram AI also supports investigation across up to 36 cameras simultaneously and can track people or objects across multiple camera feeds using AI-driven tracking.

Short version: it does in minutes what used to take a full shift.

Which Industries Use Coram AI?

The customer base is broader than you might expect.

Coram AI primarily serves organizations with existing camera infrastructure, complex multi-site deployments, or specific AI requirements, with typical use cases spanning K-12 schools, universities, hospitals, healthcare facilities, warehouses, manufacturing plants, and enterprises looking to modernize gradually.

The school safety angle is worth pausing on. Multiple school districts have deployed Coram AI specifically to meet state safety and security compliance requirements, with the platform delivering real-time notifications to campus staff, law enforcement, and parents during emergencies. That kind of use case is not just a business win. It matters.

The company now runs at more than 1,500 locations, from schools to factories. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and organizations across retail and manufacturing.

So it is not a niche tool. It is a platform that works whether you are running a distribution warehouse or a middle school in a suburb. That range of customers says a lot about how adaptable the underlying technology actually is.

Who Are the Main Competitors of Coram AI?

The space is getting crowded. But Coram AI holds a clear position within it.

Flock Safety dominates vehicle intelligence, Verkada delivers a polished single-vendor experience, and Coram AI brings full AI capability to any existing cameras without a hardware refresh. Three different approaches, three different types of customer.

Other competitors include Nomadic, Intelex Vision, 3DEye, and Swarm Analytics. Cloudastructure, Solink, and Actuate also come up regularly in the same conversations.

But here is what actually separates Coram AI from most of the field. Verkada locks you into their own hardware ecosystem. Flock Safety is purpose-built for vehicle and license plate tracking. Coram AI works with what you already have. Rather than replacing existing infrastructure, Coram layers advanced AI analytics, real-time search, and operational tools directly on top of what clients already own.

For a school district, a hospital network, or a logistics company that has spent years building out camera coverage, that is a fundamentally different conversation. You are not starting over. You are just finally getting something useful out of what you already paid for. And with $66 million raised and 1,500-plus locations live, Coram AI is making a strong case for why that approach wins.

How Coram AI Is Quietly Rewriting the Rules of Physical Security

Coram AI Raises $35 Million