Duos Technologies Group Inc., which focused on providing railroad safety technology for almost 15 years, is looking to grow by providing artificial intelligence data centers in rural markets.
The Jacksonville-based company announced the formation of Duos Edge AI when it reported quarterly results May 13 and provided details on the new business during a June 18 news conference at its Southside headquarters at 7660 Centurion Parkway.
“The new company will be focused on installing, owning and operating edge data centers,” CEO Chuck Ferry said.
Edge data centers provide computing resources to customers away from large markets.
“I expect this line of business to grow quickly, producing fast, increasing, recurring revenue for us while at the same time diversifying the company,” Ferry said.
Doug Recker, who is joining Duos as head of the new subsidiary, said it will focus initially on serving education, health care, oil and gas and manufacturing entities.
Recker was most recently founder of Jacksonville-based edge data center company EdgePresence, which was sold last year to digital infrastructure firm Ubiquity.
He said Duos’ facilities could benefit users such as doctors to quickly access information to treat their patients.
“Our mission is to bring the same level of connectivity and compute power to those in rural areas seen in the bigger cities across North America,” he said.
Recker also said its edge centers could provide economic development advantages.
“Rural cities will be able to attract bigger companies for manufacturing because our solution will deliver the necessary AI compute power and deliver more AI speeds, on-site rather than 150 miles to 350 miles away,” he said.
Duos did not provide financial projections for the company from the new business.
The company has fallen short of revenue projections from its railroad technology in recent years. After reporting $15 million in revenue in 2022, Duos projected $20 million to $21 million in 2023.
Duos was expecting a bigger focus on railroad safety after a major Norfolk Southern Corp. derailment in Ohio last year, which would increase demand for its technology.
However, the company’s revenue dropped to $7.5 million in 2023, which it attributed to project delays from three major clients.
Ferry did say he anticipates Duos growing its staff from its current employment level of 75.
“Over the next two or three years we will probably double the size of our staff if things go as we anticipate,” he said.