Artificial intelligence-powered insurance technology startup CompScience Insurance Services, officially known as Kinetic Inc., said today it has closed on a $10 million investment from Valor Equity Partners, an early backer of Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. and SpaceX Corp., joined by Four More Capital.

CompScience is a workplace safety insurance provider with a difference, uniquely combining visual AI software with incentives to help make workplaces safer. The company’s flagship product is the Intelligent Safety Platform, which works by analyzing security video with AI and data science techniques.

Using the insights this analysis provides, CompScience can provide actionable recommendations on how to mitigate risk in the workplace and measurably reduce hazard exposure. In this way, it says, it can offer insurance to protect against worker compensation claims as part of a software-as-a-service offering at lower cost than traditional providers.

The startup explains that this kind of intelligent risk assessment tool is vital for employers, as an average of 2.6 million Americans suffer on-the-job injuries each year, costing more than $167 billion in compensation payouts. CompScience says its mission is to ultimately stop 100 million preventable accidents from occurring through the use of data analytics. To that end, its Intelligent Safety Platform is made available to every company that takes out one of its insurance policies at no extra cost.

Valor Equity’s partner Vivek Pattipati said early adopters have demonstrated the potential of CompScience’s platform to reduce the frequency of injuries at work. He believes it will have a major positive impact on society as more employers adopt its solution. “The company is highly focused on solving workplace safety from first principles and disrupting the workers’ compensation insurance market with a superior product at lower cost,” Pattipati said. “CompScience is also entering the market at the right time. They represent a key piece in the puzzle of a major restructuring of American supply chains and the reshoring of manufacturing jobs.”

CompScience reckons it has seen strong demand for its platform, growing its insurance business by more than ten-times this year. At the same time, it claims to have reduced injury rates by 23% through its collaboration with partners including Swiss Reinsurance Co. Ltd. and Nationwide Mutual Insurance co.

CompScience founder and Chief Executive Josh Butler said the funding from today’s round will fuel a massive expansion of the company’s platform. He intends to bring safety analytics to millions of workers across the U.S. and internationally.

“Our AI system provides leaders with 300 times more data than traditional safety inspections, helping them transform their safety culture with data-driven decisions,” Butler added. “We’re just getting started, but to date we’ve reported over 2 million safety hazards. Within the next several years, workers and insurers will demand that every company deploys technology like ours.”

CompScience said its plan going forward is to expand into new, high-risk industry verticals and build out its teams of insurance and safety experts.

Image: CompScience