Conntour raises $7M to build AI search for security video

Conntour has raised a $7 million seed round to scale its AI-powered video surveillance platform. The company’s platform uses AI models to allow security personnel to query camera feeds using natural language.

The platform’s primary differentiator is its efficiency and scalability. According to co-founder and CEO Matan Goldner, Conntour’s system can monitor up to 50 camera feeds off a single consumer GPU—graphics hardware intended for personal use rather than enterprise data centers—such as Nvidia’s RTX 4090. The system can be deployed fully on premises, completely on the cloud, or a mix of both. It also provides a confidence score along with search results to account for poor quality footage. Goldner noted that the company is working to balance the technical trade-off between natural language flexibility and resource consumption. As Goldner, the co-founder and CEO of video surveillance startup Conntour, explained: “We have two things that we want to do at the same time, and they contradict each other. On one hand, we want to provide full natural language flexibility, LLM-style, to let you ask anything. And on the other hand there’s efficiency, so we want to make it use very few resources, because again, processing [thousands] of feeds is just insane. This contradiction is the biggest technical barrier and technical problem in our space, and what we’re working really, really hard to solve.”

This development comes amid broader debates over surveillance technology. With controversy around the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tapping into Flock’s camera network to surveil people, and home camera maker Ring drawing criticism for building new features that would enable law enforcement to ask homeowners for footage of their neighborhoods, the industry faces significant scrutiny. In response, Goldner attributed a selective approach to Conntour’s client base due to ethical concerns. He stated that the company has several large government and publicly listed customers, including Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau. Goldner explained that having large, established customers allows the company to remain selective and maintain control over who uses the platform and for what purpose, enabling them to make decisions based on what they deem moral and legal.

The startup’s $7 million seed round closed within 72 hours. The round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Y Combinator, SV Angel, and Liquid 2 Ventures. Goldner attributed the rapid close to an intense scheduling process, noting that he scheduled around 90 meetings in about eight days, but the round closed within three days of starting.

Why it matters

Conntour is positioning itself as an ethical, selective provider of AI-powered video surveillance search, differentiating itself in a controversial market by focusing on scalability and high-end government and publicly listed clients.