Applied AI with Real Human Impact: Why Now is the Time to Scale Industrial Risk Mitigation

Serving The Global Industrial Workforce 

The global shift toward regional manufacturing and supply chain resilience isn't just an economic trend; it's a human story. As global events like tariffs and supply chain disruptions force companies and consumers alike to rethink how goods are made and moved, there's potential to create millions of new industrial jobs across developed economies. But success in this transition is predicated on speed of change, concentrated focus across multiple parties, and meaningful investment into what the worksite of the future will look like. This is an existential moment for our economy that requires skills and technology our current workforce doesn't possess.

We're encountering the "barbell effect" - trained workers nearing retirement on one end, and young, inexperienced workers on the other. The middle is thin, and the knowledge transfer isn't happening fast enough to scale. Meanwhile, the pressure to produce is higher than ever. It all melts into a recipe for increased workplace injuries and risks, which are quite frankly unacceptable both morally and practically; the last thing an under-developed workforce needs is the loss of trained labor to entirely preventable injuries. 

The numbers reflecting this are sobering. Globally, workplace fatalities number in the hundreds of thousands each year, with over 5,000 in the United States alone in 2023. The vast majority of those incidents were preventable. And behind each data point is a family whose life was forever changed, a community that lost a valued member, and a workplace that failed in its most fundamental responsibility.

Industrial workers everywhere deserve more. They deserve technology that's designed with both their safety and productive success in mind, not as an afterthought.
 

Technology That Empowers, Not Replaces

AI isn’t just about replacing workers. In fact, in industrial environments, the most readily applicable AI is about making the ecosystem more effective, with more aware and safer workers.

A warehouse GM overseeing a 400,000 square foot facility with dozens of workers, dozens of products, multiple shifts, and constant activity can't be everywhere at once, yet they're still responsible for everyone's safety. Voxel’s computer vision technology serves as their cognitive extension - spotting the near-miss between a forklift and a pedestrian in zone 1, the worker at risk of falling from an elevated platform in aisle 7, the blocked emergency exit in zone 3, or the risky lifting technique in aisle 12 that happened while expediting an at-risk customer shipment.

Voxel is not replacing that supervisor's judgment or their years of experience; we're giving them superpowers to apply that expertise as a force multiplier.

When a leader gets an alert about workers operating too close to active heavy machinery or entering restricted areas where they shouldn't be, they're not just getting data - they're getting actionable intelligence that helps them prevent an injury before it happens. Supervisors can "see" and act on problems without a direct line of sight to the risky behaviors as they occur.

Voxel is also empowering the newly hired worker without decades of experience and equipping them with expert-level insights in real-time based on millions of hours of analyzed video – accelerating their professional development.

This matters more now than ever because we simply don't have enough experienced safety professionals to go around in addition to needing to rapidly scale up industrial operations. Hopefully this will all change soon as programs like Millersville University report a 90%+ placement rate for graduates in their Occupational Safety & Environmental Health Program.
 

Why $44M, Why Now

The timing of Voxel’s Series B isn't happenstance - it reflects a fundamental shift happening across industrial worksites. Companies are finally ready to invest in modernizing their risk mitigation and safety strategies with powerful new technology because they know they must stay operationally competitive.

For decades, workplace safety has been about after the fact investigations, reviewing incident reports, and analyzing claims trends months after injuries occur. That approach might have been acceptable when the technology to be proactive didn’t exist, but today's industrial leaders understand that safer operations are more productive operations, more profitable operations, and more sustainable operations so they simply can’t afford to sit back-footed any longer.

Our customers are proving this every day. When we help a facility reduce recordable injuries by 91% and save over $2.2 million in direct costs, we're not just making a safety impact - we're demonstrating that proactive safety is smart business. When Fortune 500 companies across retail, logistics, and manufacturing adopt our platform and see material improvements to throughput, they're voting with their dollars on a different, more strategic approach to workplace safety.

The market is ready, the Voxel technology is mature, and the human need has never been greater. This $44M investment allows us to meet that demand while maintaining the quality and personal touch that our customers expect. It's about scaling our impact without losing sight of our mission.

Building the Future We Believe In

As I write this, we're already deployed across hundreds of sites globally, protecting tens of thousands of workers every day. But that's just the beginning. Our vision is to make every industrial workplace safer, smarter, and more humane.

This funding accelerates our R&D capabilities, allowing us to stay ahead of evolving customer needs while maintaining our commitment to responsible AI development. We're not interested in building surveillance systems or tools that dehumanize work. We're building technology that recognizes the inherent dignity of physical labor and the people who perform it.

Now is the time to make that vision a reality.

Come join us - we’re hiring in many different roles.