MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Colorado-based Rank One Computing plans to make Morgantown the headquarters of its East Coast operation.
Company president and CEO Scott Swann said Rank One Computing specializes in advanced artificial intelligence algorithms that perform facial recognition.
“Identity-related artificial intelligence machine learning or verifying identities for a variety of services,” Swann said.
Company officials, which will be joined by WVU representatives, have a grand opening set for Friday afternoon.
The face recognition products are used by government and private industry that are known to be accurate and efficient. The company does a great deal of work with government agencies, so the Morgantown location provides easy access to Washington D.C. and available talent through WVU.
“Instead of setting up our operation in Washington D.C. like a lot of other companies do, we’re only a few hours away and we can get our people over there when we need to pretty easily. Jobs a big part of this,” Swann said.
The company will bring select units to operate from Vantage Ventures on University Avenue. They will join upstart battery maker Sparkz to increase the number of start-up companies operating in the building to nearly 30.
“Our Product Group and well as our Program Management Group and the engineering development resources that support the overall company in West Virginia,” Swann said.
The company has developed identity deduplication, face recognition at a distance and real-time screening for the government. In Healthcare, the company offers identity verification and access control and for the retail sector the company can help manage staff control and fraud prevention.
“This year we’re looking to establish at least 10 high paid high tech jobs,” Swann said. “There a a lot of opportunities we’re watching closely that could make that number much larger.”
Swann said the company plans to work with state and local governments to develop more products and refine current ones. The interaction with the local community will allow them to test and evaluate new products or concepts as well.
“We’ll get great cooperation to be able to perfect those services and then we’ll use that to springboard national or international services we can offer to commercial or government,” Swann said.