Avigilon Hits The Toronto Stock Exchange

Big Data startups are back in the limelight now that VideoIQ has been acquired by Canada’s Avigilon for $32 million. The deal is expected to close later this month.

Spun off from GE Security in 2006, VideoIQ builds surveillance systems that utilize proprietary analytics technology to provide highly accurate live detection, event verification and instant notification. The company’s offering includes an artificial intelligence that analyzes a camera’s field of view over time and automatically identifies anomalous changes to the environment, an invaluable feature for organizations seeking to protect their critical assets. The software has gained a tremendous of traction in various sectors, with notable customers including the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Air Force and AT&T.

Avigilon stands to gain VideoIQ’s technical expertise through the deal, as well as its stash of 23 Big Data patents. Both are central to CEO Alexander Fernandes’s plan to deliver an integrated surveillance platform with the “ability to prevent crime proactively.”

Over in the social search space, a stealth startup called Pushd recently raised another $1 million from anonymous investors. The company, which has received a total of $2.35 million since surfacing in 2012, provides few details on its product, but the team’s background offers a few clues. CEO Abdur Chowdhury had previously co-founded a Twitter search startup called Summize with former Pushd CTO Eric Jensen, who holds a PhD computer science with a specialization in “evaluating search systems.” And engineers Matt Sanford and Ben Cherry both worked for the microblogging giant before joining the startup.

Finally, Clearwater Analytics announced this week that it’s rolling a set of new reporting features for insurance companies. The most important addition is the ability to retrieve identification codes from the cloud and automatically populate the data in transaction reports.