Glimpse introduces Explore to give hardware makers CT X-ray speeds

Product recalls are a severe economic and operational burden for global manufacturers. A prominent example is the widespread recall of Chevy Bolt electric vehicles produced between 2017 and 2022, stemming from improper assembly at an LG battery factory that ultimately triggered a staggering $1.9 billion financial recovery cost for LG. Across the electric vehicle sector, major brands including Volkswagen, Stellantis, Hyundai, and Toyota have all faced similar disruptions. According to Eric Moch, co-founder and CEO of Glimpse, the vast majority of these major quality failures could theoretically be intercepted through CT scanning. However, traditional CT scan processes are notoriously slow, making comprehensive statistical sampling practically impossible on a large production scale.

To solve this throughput limitation, Glimpse originally engineered a method enabling battery manufacturers to inspect cells at speeds 10 to 30 times faster than conventional methods. This enhancement scales daily inspection capacities from a mere handful of cells to tens of thousands. Building upon this foundational success, Glimpse is now broadening its market reach by introducing a new product named Explore. This offering is specifically designed for industries spanning aerospace, automotive, consumer electronics, and medical devices. By deploying Glimpse's proprietary image processing software, laboratories and research and development environments can dramatically expedite their quality control evaluations using standard CT scanners.

Glimpse currently boasts over 100 enterprise customers, including notable names like Anker, Lucid, and the U.S. Navy, while generating revenue in the mid seven-figure range. The company's customer base incorporates both purchasers and vendors of complex components. The technological engine driving this performance is a custom-built image processing pipeline powered by deep learning algorithms. This software efficiently compresses scan data and eliminates visual noise. Crucially, a significant portion of this heavy computational lifting is executed locally on edge computers deployed directly at the customer's facility, ensuring that raw data is optimized before transmission to the cloud.

The resulting efficiency yields clear, high-resolution internal images that render inside a standard web browser within seconds, eliminating traditional wait times that historically spanned minutes or even hours. In addition to delivering detailed volumetric imagery, Glimpse's intuitive dashboard highlights precise dimensional measurements defined by the user. For instance, in battery cell manufacturing, the software monitors microscopic distances between internal layers. If these measurements begin to drift outside acceptable tolerances, the system automatically flags the discrepancy and highlights the exact flaw within the visual scan, enabling engineers to visually verify structural integrity.

Furthermore, Glimpse's deep learning algorithms continuously adapt by incorporating direct customer feedback, retraining dynamically over time. For businesses that lack expensive in-house CT scanning infrastructure, Glimpse provides an alternative service model. Clients can ship physical components directly to Glimpse's facility in the Boston area, where the company performs the scans on demand. Glimpse is also expanding this capability by opening a second Scan On Demand center in the San Francisco Bay Area. CEO Eric Moch notes that this outsourcing service represents a massive market opportunity, allowing smaller companies to access advanced defect detection for a fraction of the cost of heavy equipment acquisition, with a seamless pathway to software adoption when they eventually purchase their own hardware.