Investment – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

August 11, 2023

Seasoned VR Devs Raise $1.6 Million for New Studio Focused on Virtual Pet Experience

Windup Minds is a newly announced XR studio which has raised a $1.6 million seed investment for immersive experiences focused on virtual pets and companions.

Windup Minds was founded earlier this year by Bernard Yee, Ben Vance, Amy Conchie, and Stefani Swiatkowski. The quartet of seasoned VR developers have collectively worked at Oculus, WeVR, Microsoft, EA, and more, with works under their belt like Oculus demo projects Bogo, Toy Box, and First Steps, along with mainstream gaming projects like Destiny, Plants vs. Zombies, and Dishonored.

The quartet announced this week it raised $1.6 million in seed funding to get the “remote-first” studio Windup Minds off the ground. The seed investment was led by the Venture Reality Fund, Acequia Capital, and New Leaf Ventures, with participation by Nate Mitchell (founder, Oculus), Eden Chen (founder, Pragma; Riot Games), James Gwertzman (founder, Playfab; PopCap/EA), Tom Sanocki (Oculus; Pixar), Greg Essig (Apple), and Anthony Batt (Outsider DAO).

The studio says it plans to launch a “virtual creature experience for mixed and virtual reality platforms,” indicating a focus on pet-like virtual companions. The studio believes the combination of immersive XR and modern AI can create virtual companions that feel more real than any that have existed to date.

“The medium of XR is uniquely capable of building emotional connections with characters as vibrant and three-dimensional as any pet. when we built Dreamdeck [an early Oculus demo experience] for Mark [Zuckerberg] and Brendan [Iribe] to announce the Rift headset at the first Oculus Connect, we saw players tear their prototype headsets off when our T-Rex came towards them,” says co-founder Bernard Yee. “They intellectually knew they were in a little demo cubicle, but their instinctual brains told them ‘there’s a dinosaur in the room with you.’ VR and MR can make you feel like your digital pet is real—and no other medium can do this.”

The studio hasn’t indicated when they plan to announce or launch their first experience.

August 9, 2023

Collaborative Spatial Design App ‘ShapesXR’ Raises $8.6M, Expanding to Apple Vision Pro & Other Headsets

ShapesXR is a collaborative spatial design app built to make it easy to prototype spatial interfaces, interactions, and environments. The company announced today it has raised an $8.6 million seed investment, part of which the company plans to use to expand to more headsets.

While so many VR interfaces and interactions borrow heavily (if not entirely) from existing ‘flat’ design paradigms, ShapesXR is built on the premise that in order to build spatial applications you need spatial design tools. With that in mind, the app functions like a freeform canvas that allows users to mock up designs inside of VR to understand how everything fits together at scale and in 3D. With collaborative functionality, multiple people can work on projects simultaneously.

Right now that collaboration is limited to those with a Quest headset, but as part of an $8.6 million seed investment, ShapesXR says it plans to expand the app to Apple Vision Pro, Pico, and Magic Leap headsets, opening the door to broader accessibility and cross-headset collaboration.

The seed investment was led by Supernode Global, with participation from Triptyq VC, Boost VC, Hartmann Capital, and Geek Ventures.

Inga Petryaevskaya, CEO and Founder of ShapesXR says, “VR has such huge potential to transform how we all collaborate on projects and design new products, however, one of the main barriers to entry is the level of technical skill required to get started. ShapesXR has been built to remove these hurdles—it’s as easy to learn as PowerPoint. This truly democratizes 3D content creation and enables anyone to become a VR, AR and mixed reality storyteller.”

Beyond just creating shapes and scenes, ShapesXR also has a ‘layers’ function which lets users create slideshows of spatial content. This works like a simple flip-book animation, except in a 3D environment instead of a flat doodle at the corner of your notebook. Using the layers function, designers can prototype and show how spatial content should interact with the user, which allows design work to be done before any of the interactions are actually programmed.

“ShapesXR’s goal is to become the de facto industry standard for [spatial] UI/UX design—achieving for spatial computing what Figma did for the mobile computing era,” the company said in its seed investment announcement.

March 1, 2023

Pimax Secures $30M Series C1 Funding to Expand & Support Rollout of Crystal & Portal VR Headsets

Pimax, the China-based creator known for its wide field of view (FOV) VR headsets, announced it’s secured a $30 million series C1 financing round, something the company says will aid in the rollout of its new portfolio of VR devices.

The series C1 was led by Beijing-based investment firm Tuanmu Capital. This follows the company’s $20 million series B in 2020, bringing the company’s lifetime outside investment to over $69 million.

In a press statement, the company says the funds will be used to accelerate growth of its coming line of VR headsets, Pimax Crystal and Pimax Portal, enhance its position as both a consumer and enterprise-focused company, and increase investment in R&D.

Founded in 2015, Pimax is best known for its first Pimax “8K” headset Kickstarted in 2017, a consumer PC VR headset that included dual 4K panels providing an estimated 200-degree FOV, by far one of the largest in the industry at the time. Even today, many consumer headsets, such as Meta Quest 2 and HTC Vive XR Elite, feature FOVs around 110 degrees.

The company has since gone on to offer multiple iterations of its wide FOV headset, but also is set to launch both its VR standalone Pimax Crystal and hybrid Portal device, the latter of which can convert between a Nintendo Switch-style gaming handheld and a VR headset.

Both Pimax Crystal and Pimax Portal are expected to release at some point in “early 2023”, with Crystal available for pre-order on the company’s website and Portal still in the fulfillment stage from its successful 2022 Kickstarter, which garnered just over $350,000 from backers.

“Of course, we’re delighted with this new round of funding, as it allows us to boost our production capacity to meet the rapidly growing demand for our new VR products, as well as to improve both our hardware and software further,” said Pimax Founder Robin Weng. “We’ve been innovating VR technology and we will keep on doing that in the future, always pushing the limits of what is possible through technology.”

The Shanghai-based company now boasts over 300 employees in offices spread across offices in San Jose, Stockholm, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Qingdao, and Chengdu.

June 2, 2022

Amazon, Qualcomm & More Invest $11.2M in TRIPP to Build the “mindful metaverse”

TRIPP, a developer creating VR meditation experiences, announced it’s secured $11.2 million funding round which it says will be used to expand so it can meet growing global demand for mental wellbeing apps accessible through AR, VR and mobile platforms.

The Series A was led by BITKRAFT Ventures, with participation from Qualcomm, Amazon Alexa Fund, HTC, Niantic and existing investor Mayfield. This brings the Los Angeles-based company’s funding to $26.3 million to date, adding to an $11 million funding round announced in June 2021.

The company says funds will be used to expand its team in addition to supporting the acquisition of VR worldbuilding platform Eden from BeardedEye, creators of the Galactic Gallery (2017) VR experience.

TRIPP says Eden, which is its third acquisition, will also soon launch on its eponymous VR platform, which the company says will enable users to further “customize their TRIPP experience, explore digital realities and meet other people.”

“With over one billion people globally suffering from depression, anxiety, or stress, we’re hopeful that innovations like TRIPP can be a part of the solution,” said Moritz Baier-Lentz, partner at BITKRAFT Ventures. “Beyond a great product that is already a leader in its category, there was a lot to like about what Nanea and the TRIPP team have built. It’s rare to find such a combination of authentic founder-market fit, operational excellence, and an exciting vision with many avenues for future growth.”

“We’re grateful that more and more investors are recognizing the need for innovative wellness tools that expand beyond traditional meditation apps,” said Nanea Reeves, founder and CEO of TRIPP. “Through our acquisition of Eden, we’re one step closer to truly building a mindful metaverse and establishing a safe space for transformative experiences in digital realities while also empowering creators to join us in our mission.”

TRIPP is available across a host of devices, including Meta Quest 2, Vive Flow, PSVR, Nreal, and both the Web and mobile platforms. The app features guided meditations, calming environments, binaural audio for meditation, breathing exercises, and the ability to track your progress. The app is priced at either $5 per month, or $35 for lifetime access.

The post Amazon, Qualcomm & More Invest $11.2M in TRIPP to Build the “mindful metaverse” appeared first on Road to VR.

May 25, 2022

Lynx Secures $4M in Series A Funding, Aims to Become “European Champion of Mixed Reality”

Lynx, the French XR hardware startup known for crowdfunding the Lynx R-1 mixed reality headset, today announced it’s secured $4 million in its Series A round, led by social VR platform Somnium Space.

Alongside Somnium Space, participants in the latest funding round also include what Lynx calls early supporters of the company and “other investors involved in the AR/VR field such as ex-Meta and Google engineers.”

This brings the company’s total outside funding to $6.8 million, according to Crunchbase data, following the R-1 headset’s $800,000 Kickstarter campaign back in late 2021 and a seed round of $2 million in early 2019. As a part of the deal Artur Sychov, founder & CEO of Somnium Space, is joining the company’s board of directors.

Built on Qualcomm’s XR2 chipset, Lynx R-1 combines high quality cameras and virtual reality displays to achieve passthrough AR in addition to standard VR (aka, mixed reality), making it an early pioneer of the category. The headset also ditches the standard Fresnel lenses for a novel optic called a “four-fold catadioptric freeform prism,” which is said to slim down the size of Lynx R-1 seemingly beyond what current Fresnels can do.

“At Somnium Space we truly believe in the future of open and decentralized Metaverse which empowers its users. This includes, not only software, but also very importantly hardware,” says Artur Sychov, Founder & CEO of Somnium Space. “The Lynx team led by Stan has created an extraordinary AR / VR device (Lynx-r) with openness in mind which will change and revolutionize the way we all think and interact with this market category. I am very happy to support this company and believe that together we will push the boundaries and potential of the VR/AR industry forward.”

Founded in 2019, Lynx has high ambitions for its R-1 headset too. Priced at $600 for its consumer version, the company is looking to lead the way into the same product category that many established players are soon to enter, including Meta with Project Cambria and Apple with its rumored headset, reportedly code named N301.

“We have this opportunity right here to create the European Champion of Mixed Reality with our work at Lynx, supported by a vibrant community of users and developers desperate to see alternatives to Big Tech companies products and their closed ecosystems.” says Stan Larroque, founder and CEO of Lynx. “What’s the point of creating a European Metaverse if the underlying platform, the door we use to access it, remains in the hands of the same big players with their damaging business models?” he adds.

Since finalizing the design of Lynx R-1, the company has also completed an office expansion in Paris, now at more 200 square meters of R&D, and established a new office in Taiwan.

The post Lynx Secures $4M in Series A Funding, Aims to Become “European Champion of Mixed Reality” appeared first on Road to VR.

May 5, 2022

Google Acquires MicroLED Startup Raxium to Bolster AR Ambitions

Google is adding to its portfolio of XR microdisplay designs and talent, as the company announced it’s acquired microLED (µLED) designer Raxium.

The acquisition was previously reported by The Information in March, however now Google has confirmed in a blog post that it has indeed acquired Raxium, a five-year old startup building microdisplays for use in AR and VR headsets.

The Information’s report held Raxium was sold to Google for $1 billion, however official details of the acquisition are still murky. Google says Raxium will join its Devices & Services team, which is tasked with development of Google’s consumer devices.

It’s thought that Raxium will allow for Google to create lighter, cheaper displays for its upcoming AR devices. While conventional Super AMOLEDs found in smartphones measure around 50 µm per pixel, Raxium says it’s shrunk its microdisplays to feature µLED measuring 3.5 µm per pixel. The company claims its technology has led to an efficiency “5X greater than the previously published world record.”

“The team at Raxium has spent five years creating miniaturized, cost-effective and energy efficient high-resolution displays that have laid the foundation for future display technologies. Raxium’s technical expertise in this area will play a key role as we continue to invest in our hardware efforts,” says Rick Osterloh, senior VP of Google’s Devices & Services team.

Google is undoubtedly gearing up to release XR headsets of some type in the future, which may compete with devices from Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Snap. In 2020, Google acquired North, a Canada-based company known for creating unobtrusive prescription-compatible smartglasses—a sight more stylish than Google Glass. Check out our primer on the difference between smartglasses and AR headsets to learn more.

Earlier this year Google snapped up Bernard Kress, principal optical architect on the Microsoft HoloLens team. Kress is now the Director of XR Engineering at Google Labs, an internal XR division founded late last year. According to previous reports, Google Labs is currently working on an AR headset, code named Project Iris, which is rumored to ship sometime in 2024.

Reports detailing Project Iris maintain a device providing a standalone experience with onboard power, computing, and outward-facing cameras for world sensing capabilities—similar in description and function to headsets like HoloLens or Magic Leap.

The post Google Acquires MicroLED Startup Raxium to Bolster AR Ambitions appeared first on Road to VR.

April 26, 2022

Maker of the Taser Acquires VR Studio to Bolster VR Police Training

Axon, the company best known for its Taser stun guns, has announced the acquisition of VR studio Foundry 45 which it says will bolster its VR training offerings.

Founded in 1993, Axon is the company behind the well known Taser stun guns which are employed by police and military forces around the world. In modern times the company has also focused on body cams and software for administration and management of public safety organizations. This month Axon announced the acquisition of the VR studio Foundry 45.

Formed in 2015, Foundry 45 has focused on combining VR with training and marketing. The company says it has built VR experiences for the likes of Delta Air Lines, The Weather Channel, AT&T, and others.

Axon, which has previously offered VR training, says the Foundry 45 team will merge with the existing Axon VR team to bolster the company’s ability to offer VR-based training solutions.

“Virtual reality is rapidly becoming a game-changing training tool across many industries, and the acquisition of Foundry 45 will help accelerate Axon to deliver innovative skills- and scenario-based training in public safety, and will catalyze Axon’s expansion into new growth markets globally,” the company said in its announcement of the acquisition.

Axon says its goal is to use “new immersive technologies to better prepare officers for real-life situations in the field. Axon’s VR products provide virtual reality content that helps officers develop critical thinking, de-escalation techniques and tactical skills across a diverse set of highly realistic scenarios.”

The acquisition appears to have been an all-stock deal, with Axon saying that 29,507 restricted stock units (valued around $3.87 million) were “granted to two individuals in connection with the acquisition,” with a vesting schedule of three years. Axon says the deal also includes up to an additional 15,249 restricted stock units (valued around $2 million) if the company’s VR unit achieves certain performance-based goals.

Axon—which calls its stun guns “non-lethal”—understandably has a vested interest in making sure the users of its Taser products are well trained. Not just for the safety of users and targets but also for liability and the company’s image, which hinges on claims that its weapons result in no serious injury in the vast majority of cases where they are deployed.

One unfortunate incident that recently brought the Taser into the public eye was the 2021 killing of Daunte Wright in Minnesota, in which an officer claimed to have accidentally pulled out and fired her firearm instead of her Taser.

And that isn’t the only time that mistaking a gun for a Taser. According to the Star Tribune there have been at least 16 cases in the US where officers mistook the two weapons, four of which resulted in deaths.

The promise of VR training is not only that it can feel more real—which has studied benefits to lasting recall—but also that it can be cheaper and easier for public safety organizations to deploy, allowing for more training time with a broader range of scenarios and less overhead.

Whether or not VR training could have helped avert the tragic situations mentioned above isn’t clear, but one can surely hope.

The post Maker of the Taser Acquires VR Studio to Bolster VR Police Training appeared first on Road to VR.

April 7, 2022

Waveguide Maker DigiLens Announces New Investment at $530M Valuation

DigiLens, a maker of waveguide optics for AR glasses, today announced a second close of its Series D funding round, claiming a $530 million valuation.

DigiLens is one of several companies building waveguide optics and positioning them for use in XR. Waveguides allow for extremely compact near-eye optics which are no thicker than the lenses on a pair of glasses.

Today the company announced a second close of its Series D investment round which brings participation from Corning, a major materials company known for its Gorilla Glass product that’s used widely in the smartphone space, and Optimas Capital Management, the strategic investment arm of Goertek which is a major manufacturer of XR devices.

The Series D investment raised “more than $50 million”; the first close of the round was originally announced back in November 2021 and valued the company at $500 million, according to DigiLens.

With additional investment from Corning and Optimas Capital Management in the second close of the round, the company says it has been valued at $530 million. The full round includes a number of strategic investors including Samsung Electronics, Diamond Edge Ventures (the strategic investment arm of Mitsubishi Chemical), and others.

In an investment round, a startup’s valuation is determined by the price of each share multiplied by the total number of shares in the company. It’s fairly rare for a company to state their valuation outright, except in cases where they believe the valuation shows the company in a position of strength and momentum.

That’s clearly the case here; with waveguides expected to be a critical component in AR headsets and glasses targeting mainstream adoption, DigiLens is vying to be the leading supplier of the technology. The goal of publicly announcing a large valuation is likely to throw off competitors by making potential investors think twice about who is leading the race toward an AR glasses market that many believe is poised to explode.

The company claims its particular approach to waveguides—diffractive gratings manufactured with an optical copy process—are the most cost effective and scalable option among available waveguide technologies. DigiLens also says its specific manufacturing process allows for more flexible optical designs that give its optics advantages over other waveguides.

Of course, every waveguide company makes similar claims about manufacturability and scalability; it won’t be clear who is actually right until we start to see mass-produced devices coming to market.

To that end, the company claims the first products based on its waveguide technology will hit the market within the next year.

“We’re working on projects today that use our industry leading volume Bragg grating technology that over the next year will be in the market in a material way. These advances will showcase that we’re the only solution that is going to work when efficiency, uniformity and cost are considered,” says DigiLens CEO Chris Pickett. “Then, with our next generation technology, we’ll have a step function in performance that will extend our lead even more.”

And we’ve got a good clue about what the first such devices could look like.

Last year DigiLens revealed the Design v1, a modular reference headset which the company hopes will accelerate the development and consumerization of AR glasses. The device is based on Snapdragon XR2 with a claimed 50° diagonal field-of-view from the company’s optics. Road to VR got an exclusive hands-on with the headset.

It seems likely that companies working with DigiLens will have received a sample of the Design v1, and some may even be using it as the basis for their own design.

And while AR glasses are where the industry ultimately wants to reach with this technology, it’s likely that we’ll see non-immersive smartglasses as the first entrants into the all-day wearable glasses space, eventually giving way to similar but more advanced devices with full AR capabilities.

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March 29, 2022

Veteran VR Studio of ‘Fracked’ & ‘Phantom: Covert Ops’ Raises $35M to Expand Development & Publishing

nDreams, the veteran VR studio behind titles like Fracked (2021) and Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), today announced a $35 million investment from Aonic Group.

nDreams was an early adopter of VR, starting with early VR tech demos in 2014, followed by small titles for headsets like Gear VR by 2015, and a larger title, The Assembly, which launched alongside the original Oculus Rift in 2016. Ever since, the company has been dedicated to VR development, having launched more recent games like the Oculus-exclusive Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), PSVR-exclusive Fracked (2021), and partnered with some major IP with the likes of Far Cry VR: Dive Into Insanity, a game developed specifically for out-of-home VR attractions.

Some eight years since its pivot into VR, nDreams seems to have positioned itself well to continue its relevance for another eight years, having today announced a $35 million investment from the likes of Aonic Group, the video game division of Mercia Asset Management.

With the influx of cash the studio says it plans to “create more ambitious titles,” grow its internal studios, and expand its publishing business which it had established back in 2021 with an initial $2 million fund; its first publisher title, Little Cities, is due to launch Spring.

With two internal studios under its umbrella—Studio Orbital and Studio Elevation—nDreams says it currently employs 130 people and plans to expand to 175 by the end of 2022. The company says Orbital is focused on building live-service games for VR while Elevation is “creating AAA VR games and new IPs.”

As part of the announcement the studio says it has its “strongest line-up of future projects already in development,” including games in the works aimed at the upcoming PSVR 2.

The post Veteran VR Studio of ‘Fracked’ & ‘Phantom: Covert Ops’ Raises $35M to Expand Development & Publishing appeared first on Road to VR.

March 24, 2022

Surgery Training Platform ‘Osso VR’ Secures $66M Series C Financing

Osso VR, the VR surgical training platform, today announced it’s closed a $66 million Series C financing round, something the company says will be used to broaden its VR surgical offering and hire more expert talent.

The Series C round was led by Oak HC/FT, which includes participation from Signalfire, GSR Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.

This brings the company’s lifetime outside investment to around $109 million, with its $27 million Series B arriving in July 2021.

Founded in late 2016 by UCLA and Harvard-trained orthopedic surgeon Justin Barad, MD, Osso VR’s surgical training tech provides on-demand, educational experiences to surgeons with a focus on acquainting them with emerging techniques and technologies. The company works with industry leaders such as Johnson & Johnson, Stryker, Zimmer Biomet and Smith & Nephew.

More recently, Osso VR made strides during the COVID-19 pandemic since its VR training allows medical professionals to learn and practice from a distance. It provides modules across a number of fields, including orthopedics, endoscopy, and a host of interventional procedures.

The company has now grown to more than 150 employees, and Osso VR says it plans to grow “exponentially” over the next year.

“The future at Osso VR is incredibly bright. Each step of the way, we’ve stayed true to our mission to democratize healthcare and seen the results that our platform brings to surgical training and assessment,” said Barad. “This round of investment supports the next step of our journey to provide access to all healthcare professionals. I couldn’t be more excited to take this next step with such a talented, passionate team.”

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