Roboflow
YC S20San Francisco, US · Founded 2019 · Delaware corporation · 100 employees · Hiring · 8 known investors
Roboflow provides tools for developers to build and deploy computer vision applications, including image annotation, model benchmarking, and dataset management. The platform serves software engineers and enterprises who need to create vision-based applications.
Also known as Roboflow
Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (S20)
Roboflow was founded in 2019 by Joseph Nelson and Brad Dwyer.
Board
Investors · 8
Reported raises · per SEC filings
Form D private placements$60.9M disclosed across 3 rounds · 2020–2024
▶$37.5MraisedAug 2024 · 15 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Joseph NelsonExecutive Officer, Director
- David SacksDirector
- Crystal HuangDirector
- Bradley DwyerExecutive Officer, Director
- Offering amount
- $40M
- Amount sold
- $37.5M
- Sales commissions
- $500K
- Placement agents
- Finalis Securities LLC
- First sale
- Aug 2024
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
▶$20.5MraisedSep 2021 · 36 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- JOSEPH NELSONExecutive Officer, Director
- DAVID SACKSDirector
- BRADLEY DWYERExecutive Officer, Director
- Offering amount
- $20.5M
- Amount sold
- $20.5M
- First sale
- Aug 2021
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware, 2019
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
▶$2.9MraisedJan 2021 · 45 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Joseph NelsonExecutive Officer, Director
- Bradley DwyerExecutive Officer, Director
- Offering amount
- $2.9M
- Amount sold
- $2.9M
- First sale
- Dec 2020
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware, 2019
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.
The YC application· Summer 2020 batch
Alumni Q&A
- What is the core problem you are solving? Why is this a big problem? What made you decide to work on it?
- The founders observed that engineers need tooling to build and deploy custom computer vision solutions, where each use case, team skill set, and level of required customization differs, yet all follow a shared pipeline: collecting, managing, labeling, and processing data, then training, deploying, and displaying results from a model. Roboflow offers tools for each step and integrates with existing systems, with no software or hardware lock-in, and can be used through code, a UI, or a combination. Using the platform, a developer can bring in data via API, label images with a hosted annotation tool, run hosted or exported model training, and deploy the model through a hosted API endpoint.
Summarized from the founders' answers on their Y Combinator profile.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Roboflow provides an end-to-end computer vision platform used to build applications that process images, video and real-time streams. The workflow it supports spans selecting or fine-tuning a model (either recent foundation models or custom-trained models for a specific task), chaining multiple models together with custom logic and pipeline integrations, and then deploying inference either in cloud infrastructure or across fleets of edge devices.
The platform is developer-oriented and is complemented by a set of open source projects, including Inference (a production inference server supporting many model architectures and fine-tuned models), supervision (utilities spanning annotation through object tracking), trackers (Apache 2.0 multi-object tracking algorithms designed to pair with any detection model), notebooks (Jupyter notebooks demonstrating training with current computer vision models), and autodistill (using large foundation models to label data for training smaller supervised models). Roboflow integrates with cloud storage and infrastructure providers (AWS S3, Google Cloud, Azure, Supabase, Kubernetes), camera and capture vendors (Axis Communications, Basler, Luxonis, FLIR, Verkada, Reolink, Pelco, Unifi, Lucid Vision Labs), labeling and training-data tools (CVAT, LabelMe, Labelbox, Unity, Unreal Engine, Create ML), training frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras, Hugging Face, Ultralytics, Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Rekognition, Google Colab), industrial systems (ROS, Ignition, Rockwell Automation, Aveva, SAP, Kaleris, Pinc), and edge hardware (NVIDIA, Intel, Raspberry Pi, Luxonis, Replit).
Business model
Roboflow offers a self-serve software platform for developers alongside an enterprise motion that pairs tooling with expert guidance, supported by open source libraries that funnel developers into the hosted product.
Traction
Roboflow states that over 1 million engineers deploy visual intelligence with the platform, that over 16,000 organizations build with it, and that over half of the Fortune 100 are users. Named customers include BNSF Railway (real-time intermodal yard inventory and automated train wheel inspection across a network handling 4.8 million carloads of freight annually), USG (edge-optimized vision AI to reduce unplanned downtime across more than 50 manufacturing sites), Fletcher Sports (player tracking for broadcast camera systems at the US Open and Wimbledon), and Pella Corporation.
Latest developments
Roboflow announced a Visual Intelligence Summit to be held on October 22 in San Francisco.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography
Market position
Roboflow positions itself as an end-to-end vision AI platform for developers and large enterprises, distinguished by broad adoption claims and a portfolio of widely used open source computer vision libraries.
Emphasis on speed from idea to production (running models within minutes of installing the open source inference server), breadth of integrations across cameras, clouds, training frameworks and industrial systems, deployment flexibility between cloud and edge, and enterprise security posture including SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, HIPAA compliance, encryption of data in transit and at rest, and an A+ Qualys rating for SSL transport.
Technology
The stack covers model selection and fine-tuning, multi-model chaining with custom logic, and inference deployment in scalable cloud infrastructure or on edge devices. Roboflow Inference, an open source deployment server, can be installed and started via pip and called through an InferenceHTTPClient SDK against hosted or local endpoints for images and video.
Go-to-market
Developer-led adoption through free sign-up, documentation, SDKs, APIs and widely used open source repositories, combined with enterprise sales via demo requests, published customer stories, industry use-case pages, and events such as the Visual Intelligence Summit.
Software and machine learning engineers, plus enterprises across aerospace and defense, automotive, consumer goods, energy and utilities, healthcare and medicine, industrial manufacturing, logistics, media and entertainment, retail and service, robotics, transportation, and warehousing.
Geography
Headquarters and company events are in San Francisco; customer deployments include North American freight and manufacturing networks and international sporting events such as Wimbledon.
Compiled by commissioned research from 1 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Images
Founder mafia
4 people who came through Roboflow went on to found or lead other companies.
Competitors · 7
by search overlap
Companies competing with Roboflow for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 1
launches, deals, and filingsRoboflow announced its Visual Intelligence Summit, scheduled for October 22 in San Francisco.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
Legal entities · 1
corporate structureIn the news
Exclusive: Roboflow, vision AI startup, raises $40 million Series B | Fortunefortune.com · Nov 2024▸Research sources · 1
primary sources listed
- Roboflowroboflow.com · web
1 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Roboflow do?
- Roboflow is a computer vision platform that lets developers and enterprises build, train and deploy visual AI models.
- Who founded Roboflow?
- Roboflow was founded by Joseph Nelson, Brad Dwyer in 2019.
- Who are Roboflow's investors?
- Roboflow's investors include Earl Grey Capital, Frontline Ventures, GV (Google Ventures), Next Level Ventures, Y Combinator, Zag Capital, Craft Ventures, Lachy Groom.
- How much funding has Roboflow raised?
- Roboflow has disclosed $60.9M raised across 3 rounds.
- Where is Roboflow headquartered?
- Roboflow is headquartered in San Francisco, US.