Smart home sector has welcomed a major player. The AI company liko.ai, founded by Ryan Li, former chairman of Meituan's hardware committee and former CEO of Lexar Global, in November 2025, has recently completed its first round of funding. The investor lineup includes Guoxiang Capital under SenseTime, Oriental Fortune Sea, and Xunfei Venture Capital under iFLYTEK, as well as financial institutions. Lightsource Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. This round of funding will be mainly used for three directions of edge-side visual language model (VLM), aiming to reconstruct the global household visual product market worth over $10 billion with the concept of "AI-native."
Targeting pain points: Privacy and homogeneity are the Achilles' heel of home cameras
The current smart camera market is vast but has long been plagued by two issues:
- Risk of privacy leakage: a large amount of video is uploaded to the cloud, and users worry about data abuse;
- High homogeneity of functions: only support motion detection and video playback, lacking proactive intelligent services.
liko.ai proposed a "edge-side intelligence + local closed-loop" solution:
- All AI reasoning is done on the device, and original video never leaves home;
- Through self-developed lightweight visual language model, achieve semantic-level understanding (such as "a child approaches the stairs alone" or "a pet knocks over a vase"), rather than simple changes in the picture;
- Users can query through natural language, such as "Who entered the study yesterday afternoon?"
Technical foundation: Building a family AI computing hub
Different from traditional cameras, liko.ai positions its products as a family AI visual hub, with three core capabilities:
- Edge-side VLM engine: supports multimodal understanding and event reasoning;
- Local storage and computing: integrates edge AI chips and secure storage modules;
- Open API ecosystem: in the future, it can connect smart locks, lighting, security, and other devices, building an active family protection network.
The company emphasized that its hardware design will balance aesthetics and technical invisibility, avoiding the "surveillance feeling," truly integrating into modern home environments.
Experienced founding team + industry capital support, accelerating implementation
Founder Ryan Li has deep experience in hardware and consumer technology - he once led the hardware ecosystem layout of Meituan and led Lexar (Lexar) to become a global storage brand leader. This time, together with AI giants like SenseTime (computer vision) and iFLYTEK (speech and cognitive intelligence), liko.ai has the advantage of quick implementation in algorithms, chips, channels, and brands.
According to insiders, the first product will be launched in Q2 2026, focusing on high-end home security and childcare monitoring scenarios.
AIbase Observation: The "iPhone moment" for home visuals is approaching
The global home camera market has shipped over 200 million units annually, but the level of intelligence is still in the early stage. The entry of liko.ai marks that the industry is moving from "being able to see" to "being able to understand, think, and protect privacy."
