Varjo Technologies is working on developing a virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) headset designed to bring human-eye resolution for VR to industry. The company has now announced a $31m (USD) Series B investment, led by Atomico, which is aimed at bringing the device to market.
The Series B investment will be used to scale Varjo’s current hardware and software teams from its current 80-person team to over 200 in the next 12 months, and will also be used to finance the global launch of Varjo’s first product.
The aim to produce an industrial grade VR/MR headset that lets professionals in sectors from aerospace to architecture work in human-eye resolution in VR or MR, when designing new products. The headset can be integrated with the world’s most popular 3D engines and software tools. The Varjo headset has been created to allow for high levels of precision and visual fidelity.
“We hope that the impact of our hardware and software platform on industry will be as profound as the introduction of the Graphical User Interface,” said Varjo co-founder and CEO, Urho Konttori. “At Varjo we’re extremely proud to welcome Atomico, Europe’s most experienced VC, and industry icon Siemens, to our mission of launching a new era of immersive computing for professionals.”
“The resolution of VR devices on the market today is a fraction of what the average human eye can see,” said Atomico founding partner and CEO, Niklas Zennström. “Until we met Varjo’s visionary founders and experienced their superior product firsthand, we thought that VR was still at least 10 years away from being truly useful for professionals. It’s because of Varjo’s world class team that industries such as automotive, engineering, aerospace, architecture, construction, industrial design and real-world training simulations won’t have to wait that long to be able to utilize the technology for their business-critical use cases.”
Varjo is planning on launching the headset in Q4 of 2018, with an AR/MR add-on to the headset available on 2019. For future coverage of Varjo, keep checking back with VRFocus.