Last October Starbreeze AB announced that Taiwanese PC manufacturer Acer had invested $5 million USD into its StarVR Corporation, increasing Acer’s interest to 66.7%, while Starbreeze interest will be 33.3% after originally starting the joint venture in 2016. Today, Starbreeze has confirmed that the company is in talks with Acer about a potential Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the joint venture, but no decision has been taken at present.
An IPO is where shares of a company are sold to investors, taking a privately held company and transforming it into a public company. This is done for a number of reasons, usually to raise new equity capital or to monetize the investments of private shareholders such as company founders. In this case the former is probably the most likely reason, with Acer and Starbreeze looking to fund development of the StarVR head-mounted display (HMD), which is being aimed at location-based VR.
“I can confirm that we are in talks with Acer on the possibly of an IPO for StarVR,” said Bo Andersson-Klint, Starbreeze CEO in a statement. “We’re in agreement with Acer that this is an excellent way to propel the business into becoming the leading global VR company we set out to create from the beginning. StarVR’s mission is to provide VR related hardware for enterprise solutions and location-based entertainment set ups, such as the VR center that we are building in Dubai. With the research and development phase of the StarVR headset completed, we are confident we have the best, most durable and most scalable solution on the market.
“With 210-degrees field of view, in high definition resolution over the entire field, eye-tracking, support for multiple tracking solutions, lightweight casing, backpack wireless option and its own 2nd generation Fresnel lens – the StarVR headset is a real technological achievement. With the headset and its subsystems in near completion, StarVR is well set for its own successful business. We are excited to be able to demonstrate this capability in our VR center in Dubai in the near future.”
Both companies have already shown their expertise in both VR hardware and software, with Acer releasing its Windows Mixed Reality headset last year and Starbeeze studio OVERKILL having launched Payday 2 VR in November 2017. As further details on the possible IPO are released, VRFocus will keep you informed.