Clearview AI Raises $30 Million From Unidentified Investors ⇥ nytimes.com

Kashmir Hill, the New York Times:

Clearview AI is currently the target of multiple class-action lawsuits and a joint investigation by Britain and Australia. That hasn’t kept investors away.

The New York-based start-up, which scraped billions of photos from the public internet to build a facial-recognition tool used by law enforcement, closed a Series B round of $30 million this month.

The investors, though undeterred by the lawsuits, did not want to be identified. Hoan Ton-That, the company’s chief executive, said they “include institutional investors and private family offices.”

It makes sense that these investors would want their association with the company kept secret, since identifying them as supporters of a creepy facial recognition company is more embarrassing that their inability to understand irony. Still, it shows how the free market is betting that this company will grow and prosper despite its disregard for existing laws, proposed legislation, and a general sense of humanity or ethics.

Dismantle this company and legislate its industry out of existence. Expose the investors who are propping it up.