Pimax came to the attention of many virtual reality (VR) enthusiasts when it launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund an 8K VR headset. The phenomenal success of that campaign has apparently piqued the interest of investors, leading to a new injection of funds.
The Kickstarter campaign for the Pimax 8K headset completed with over $4 million (USD) in donations, vastly overshooting the original funding goal of $200,000 and unlocking a plethora of stretch goals for its backers, such a a choice of controller designs so users can pick between HTC Vive-style touchpad or a more traditional thumbstick. Other stretch goals included a comfort kit and prescription lenses for the visor.
Now, according to Chinese tech publication YiVian, Pimax has now announced that is has closed almost ￥100 million in Series A funding, led by Chinese firms O-Film and Tianma Bearing Group.
The Pimax Kickstarter campaign become the best-funded VR project on the crowd-funding platform, surpassing the $2.45 million raised by a similar campaign by Oculus. The huge amount of interest in the project appeared to prove that the public were eager to get hold of VR headsets with a large field-of-view and higher resolution, with both the 8K and 5K variants of the Pimax headset offering higher resolution displays that is currently available on even high-end VR headsets.
Pimax have confirmed through a Kickstarter update that that final design of the headset is locked and ready for manufacture, and that Pimax is now part of the OpenXR working group in an effort to make it simpler for developers to create content for the device.
It is expected that Pimax will use the new funding injection to scale its operations upwards and outwards, perhaps bringing the Pimax 8K headset to general commercial availability.
The first headsets are expected to ship to Kickstarter backers in early 2018. Further news on Pimax will be right here on VRFocus.