3VR Security closes $17 million round

Late-stage round led by Menlo Ventures brings video search company's total funding to $53 million

3VR Security, Inc., a video surveillance and search software provider, announced Monday that it has closed a $17 million late-stage round in new financing led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Focus Ventures and previous investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and DAG Ventures.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif. and founded in 2002, the company had previously raised four other rounds--$12 million Series D in 2009, $9 million Series C in 2006, $10 million Series B in 2006 and $5 million Series A--bringing its funding total to $53 million.

In addition to providing digital video recorders and RAID storage hardware to organizations and businesses, 3VR boasts technology that can extract faces, license plates and other kinds of useful visual data from recorded video. Anyone can install surveillance cameras in endless rooms, from every angle, but the real challenge is putting that wealth of data to use when it’s needed. 3VR offers (a patented) video search and analytics engine, which it claims cuts investigation times by 50 percent.

The company specifically provides solutions for financial institutions, retail stores, government buildings, hotels, casinos and schools.

“3VR is bringing proven innovation to the security industry at a time when it’s needed more than ever,” said Aisling MacRunnels, CMO, 3VR. “We’re in a unique position of allowing customers to intelligently search video using specific criteria and analytics. The result is actionable data that can solve previously unsolvable security and business problems. 3VR can actually transform what security systems are capable of, using intelligent search and analytics to make them much more powerful and to expand their use into video-based business intelligence.”

Recently named 3VR’s chief marketing officer, MacRunnels previously served as senior vice president of software marketing at Sun Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle for $7.4 billion at the beginning of the year.

3VR will use its new funding to further develop its video search and analytics product as well as to expand globally.