Syntonym

Founded in 2019 by Baturay Gönülal and Kıvanç Kamer, Syntonym is a London-based technology firm addressing the critical need for privacy in an increasingly video-centric world. The company has developed a patent-pending technology for lossless anonymization, which is designed to protect personal data captured by cameras. This process involves irreversibly removing biometric identifiers from faces in images and videos and replacing them with synthetically generated, hyper-realistic ones. A key differentiator of Syntonym's solution is its ability to preserve essential analytical data, such as facial expressions, gaze, head pose, and other key attributes, ensuring the data remains useful for AI model training and analytics while complying with global privacy regulations like GDPR.

Syntonym's technology serves a diverse client base across various industries. The primary market focus is the mobility and automotive sector, where it enables the development of autonomous vehicles and driver monitoring systems by anonymizing vast amounts of video data collected during operations. Beyond automotive, the company has extended its services to the financial sector, partnering with banks to anonymize employee visuals during video calls, and has applications in healthcare and law enforcement. The business model operates through on-premise and cloud-based solutions, offering flexibility for clients who have already amassed large datasets. Revenue is generated by providing these tailored anonymization services, which can be deployed on the cloud, on-premise, or integrated via mobile SDK.

The company's product is a real-time, AI-based video anonymization service. Its core feature is the ability to generate unique, anonymous faces that replace real ones in video streams or stored footage. This synthetic anonymization also extends to other identifiable information, such as license plates, through the use of synthetic overlays. Unlike traditional methods like blurring, which can degrade the quality and utility of the visual data, Syntonym's approach maintains data integrity for analytics. This capability allows businesses to innovate and leverage camera-based technologies without compromising individual privacy. The company has successfully raised $1.54 million in seed funding over five rounds to support its growth and development. Keywords: visual data privacy, data anonymization, synthetic data generation, GDPR compliance, AI video analytics, facial recognition privacy, biometric data protection, privacy-preserving AI, automotive data solutions, mobility technology, video surveillance anonymization, synthetic face generation, data utility, AI training data, cloud anonymization, on-premise data protection, real-time anonymization, privacy compliance software, ethical AI, data security