Ripcord Enhances Its Vision With Appointment of Barmak Heshmat to Advisory Board

MIT research scientist brings deep knowledge of cutting-edge
Terahertz imaging technology to Ripcord’s growing roster of industry
heavyweights

HAYWARD, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ripcord, the world’s first robotic digitization company dedicated to
creating a truly paperless world, today announced the appointment of
Barmak Heshmat, former research scientist at MIT, to its advisory board.
He joins an already stellar roster, which includes Apple co-founder,
Steve Wozniak, former NASA CTO, Chris Kemp and Oracle co-founder, Bruce
Scott. The appointment promises to advance the company’s Canopy software
and robotic systems beyond the conventional limitations of optics
through Heshmat’s groundbreaking work in Terahertz imaging technology.

The Terahertz imaging technology, pioneered by Heshmat at the MIT Media
Lab, is capable of time-gated spectroscopic imaging that allows for
content extraction through layered structures. Today, that means this
technology can read through 9-20 pages of a closed book using Terahertz
waves. But for the future, it unlocks the possibility of reading entire
boxes of paper without removing the lid. As the technology is integrated
with Ripcord’s existing OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities
and AI powered entity extraction, the combination of technologies will
underpin Ripcord’s next big step forward, enabling Ripcord to transition
from being a leader in the content management industry to becoming the
industry’s ultimate disruptor.

Currently, Heshmat serves as the founder and CEO of BRELYON, a stealth
startup. Formerly a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Barmak is a pioneer in Terahertz technology that scans and
reads pages through closed books with invisible radiation. Heshmat’s
past work has disrupted the world of imaging all the way from
fundamentals in design of optics to introduction to new applications
such as batch scanning.

“I’m honored to join Ripcord’s advisory board to help leverage lessons
learned in THz imaging and time-of-flight imaging that can help Ripcord
radically accelerate data capture from paper documents,” said Barmak
Heshmat, founder and CEO of BRELYON. “Ripcord is an innovative and
forward-thinking company that combines data that we can uncover through
cutting-edge non-optical imaging with machine learning and artificial
intelligence to produce insights that previously could not have been
imagined. It’s exciting to think about the possibilities this creates as
we transition from physical to digital.”

“Barmak’s help in commercializing this approach will make Ripcord’s
mission of taking the entire world paperless a reality,” said Alex
Fielding, founder and iCEO, Ripcord. “It’s not everyday that you meet a
person as brilliant and curious as Barmak, much less have the
opportunity to learn from him and work alongside him to commercialize
and scale a technology approach that can help us create a paperless
future. This advancement in imaging is the technological equivalent of
going from an X-Ray to a high resolution MRI.”

Co-founded by former Apple and NASA employees, Ripcord enables companies
to digitize paper records and connect those records to existing
enterprise systems. The company provides an alternative to outdated
records management systems that are overly complex, require expensive
customization and take years to effectively implement.

Ripcord’s robotics technology reduces digitization costs to a fraction
of the marketplace’s legacy options by achieving higher quality results
at 10 times the speed. Heshmat’s appointment will continue to shake up
the market while elevating industry standards for data digitization and
records management.

The Ripcord board of directors includes Andy Wheeler, a general partner
at GV; Jeb Miller, a general manager of Icon Ventures; Wen Hsieh, a
partner at KPCB; Peter Hebert, a board observer and co-founder and
managing partner of Lux Capital; and Patrick Dennis, Ripcord chairman
and president and CEO of Aspect Software.

To learn more, please contact sales@ripcord.com
for more details or visit ripcord.com.

About Ripcord

Ripcord is transforming the $25 billion records management industry
through robots that scan, index and categorize paper records, making
them searchable on the cloud and integrated into existing enterprise
systems. Ripcord is based in Hayward, Calif. and has raised $65 million
from leading investors including Kleiner Perkins, GV, Baidu, Lux
Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, Steve Wozniak, Legend Star, and Icon
Ventures. To learn more about Ripcord: www.ripcord.com
and follow the company on Twitter @getripcord.

To learn more about Ripcord visit www.ripcord.com

Contacts

Touchdown PR
Derrick Shannon
ripcord@touchdownpr.com
512-373-8500