Investment firm Digital Alpha has led a $200m investment to acquire majority stake in Massachusetts-based DTiQ, a provider of video intelligence and analytics for restaurants, convenience stores and specialty retailers.

Digital Alpha has a collaboration agreement with Cisco Systems to give it preferred access to Cisco’s pipeline of commercial opportunities requiring equity financing.

The investment firm has completed a majority investment in DTiQ, which has more than 45,000 locations supported on its platform. Recent innovations include Covid SmartAudits, Speed of Service AI and its AI fraud analytics.

“The use cases for digitisation for our customers are exploding, and our roots in next-generation video mean that there are some truly unique benefits we can provide,” said Mike Coffey, CEO of DTiQ. “The future is to continue driving these incredible outcomes for our customers using AI, analytics, IoT and machine learning to accelerate the real-time nature of our solution and broaden their value. This is a special day for our customers and our employees, as Digital Alpha and Cisco Meraki appreciated the immense value this presents to continue helping customers in this space. We chose Digital Alpha and Cisco because of what we can accomplish together.”

Digital Alpha has over $1.5bn under management and the investment in DTiQ is being joined by a syndicate of debt investors as well as enhanced by Digital Alpha’s strategic collaboration agreement with Cisco Meraki.

“With DTiQ and the Cisco Meraki platform, our customers can easily create more AI-driven smart retail spaces that streamline operations such as food preparation, measure speed of service to improve customer satisfaction, and reduce risk with retail video intelligence,” said Joe Weiss, worldwide leader of IoT and intelligence at Cisco Meraki. “The DTiQ cloud-based video analytics platform is a great complement to our smart camera, sensor and wireless portfolio, and we’re excited to see the experiences customers can create with it.”

Throughout its history, DTiQ has been focused on creating RoI for its customers, many of whom have relied on its technology for a decade or longer. DTiQ combines video technologies, point of sale and video analytics and video-based smart-audit services, in addition to in-store coaching and auditing.

“Digital Alpha is excited about the investment in DTiQ because it is not every day that you have the ability to shape an industry,” said Rick Shrotri, managing partner of Digital Alpha. “The fundamental use cases of IoT and intelligence to help DTiQ customers are unparalleled. Digital Alpha brings key expertise and supportive capital and we are pleased to support DTiQ and its customers on this journey.”

DTIQ’s existing management team will continue to lead the company.

This transaction has received all regulatory approvals and closed. Digital Alpha will become the majority investor in DTiQ and has appointed Rick Shrotri, Neil Sheridan and Scott Puopolo to DTiQ’s board of directors.

DTiQ provides intelligent video-based surveillance and loss prevention services combining surveillance equipment with cloud-based analytics and managed services. It has been in business for over 20 years, enhancing over eight million consumer experiences daily, while protecting trillions of dollars of assets.