KeyLemon Blog

KeyLemon collaborates with SempToshiba

Already nominated as one of the world’s 100 most promising projects at the Top 100 awards in San Diego in January, the Martigny start-up has just signed a contract with Semp Toshiba, one of South America’s leading manufacturers of IT equipment.

Nominated as one of the world’s 100 best start-ups by Red Herring in January 2010, the company has just signed a contract to install its face recognition software in computers produced by the Brazilian company Semp Toshiba.

Based in Salvador de Bahia, Semp Toshiba manufactures Toshiba electronic equipment under licence in Brazil, offering a very wide range of products, including laptops. Keen to stand out from its competitors, Semp Toshiba is relying on KeyLemon’s face recognition software to give its clients easy, user-friendly access to their computers. The software enables users whose computers have a webcam to access their Windows session or their applications without having to enter a password. All they have to do is sit in front of their computer and it will recognise their face.

“We’ve had a huge success with our software on the Internet, which has been downloaded by over 800,000 users in just over a year”, says Gilles Florey, CEO and joint founder of KeyLemon. The agreement with Semp Toshiba is actually an OEM licence that enables the Brazilian company to integrate the KeyLemon software into all the computers it produces. It’s the culmination of a lengthy negotiation process that began in January and ended with the signature of the agreement in early August. “This is a very important agreement for us because it gives us tremendous credibility in a very competitive market. It acknowledges not only of the quality of our work, but also the expertise of our technology partner, the Idiap Research Institute, which developed the face recognition algorithms on which our software is based”, adds the youthful company director.