The Osnabrück startup’s camera-based self-checkout system, which identifies food and drinks without barcodes in less than 10 seconds, is already working at 43 points of sale at the Orlando Magic’s NBA arena and about a third of German universities. Series A was led by eCAPITAL and Simon Capital.
VisioLabA German startup developing AI-powered self-checkout systems for the food service industry has closed an $11 million Series A round led by eCAPITAL and Simon Capital. Existing backers included High-Tech Gründerfonds, APX (a joint Axel Springer and Porsche fund) and family office zwei.7.
Founded in Osnabrück in 2019, the company will use the capital to accelerate international expansion, grow its team from 25 to 40 people and open a dedicated US office in Boston.
The product is deliberately inferior equipment. In a stadium stand or university cafeteria, a customer places their food and drink under a standard Apple iPad.
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Camera-based artificial intelligence identifies items in seconds, displays the price, and accepts payment via a compact Bluetooth terminal, without barcodes, special scanning equipment, or long queues.
The entire unit weighs less than 25 pounds and can be installed in 15 minutes. According to the company, it takes about four minutes to train the AI on a new menu of about 150 items. The model runs as software on the iPad itself, meaning there’s no special hardware to replace when Apple updates its device line.
The US market has been the main growth driver. VisioLab currently operates 43 systems spanning nearly the entire venue inside Kia Center, the NBA’s Orlando Magic arena. NFL teams Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers use the system in their stadiums, and Inter Miami selected VisioLab as the launch partner for the new NU stadium.
The US now accounts for about 50% of VisioLab’s revenue, with the company claiming over 1,000% year-over-year growth in the region, a number that reflects a small absolute base but highlights rapid adoption in the sports and entertainment vertical.
The company said it handles about one million transactions per month across all deployments.
The other half of the business is more prosaic but more defensible: corporate canteens, university canteens and employee restaurants at large German employers. About one in three German university campuses use VisioLab technology through their student services organizations.
The system is applied to employee meals in DAX-listed corporations and banking, insurance and automobile companies. Global catering companies Compass Group and Aramark are partners in both Europe and the US, a distributor advantage that effectively embeds VisioLab into locations where these two companies already operate, without VisioLab needing to win each site independently.
The funding will support market entries in Australia, New Zealand, Austria, the Netherlands and the UK. Co-founder and president Ivo Gernemann will lead the US expansion from Boston.
New executives are being brought in from Klarna, SumUp and Google, and about 15 roles are currently open in marketing in Boston and engineering in Germany.
The foodservice checkout market is a real problem area: high-volume, time-sensitive, and poorly served by traditional barcode scanning that breaks down when employees are dealing with hundreds of different menu items, substitutions, and made-to-order combinations.
VisioLab’s vision-based approach completely eliminates the barcode problem, but it presents its own challenges: AI must reliably distinguish similar-looking objects at speed, handle partially covered products, and remain accurate under lighting conditions in environments ranging from brightly lit corporate cafeterias to dimly lit lounges.
