Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
San Francisco-based Osterhout Design Group (ODG) said it closed a large $58 million Series A funding round, and will use the money to “accelerate its existing production capabilities” and “complete its new products” to be introduced at CES in January.
Shenzhen O-film Tech Co., Ltd., Vanfund Urban Investment & Development Co. Ltd., 21st Century Fox and individual investors participated in the round. With the money ODG also plans to grow its patent portfolio and hire worldwide, growing the ranks of its 80 employees.
“For eight years, we’ve taken a very systematic approach to designing and refining our smartglasses for specific applications from the US government, industry and enterprise customers in a wide variety of markets, and that will not change,” said Ralph Osterhout, CEO of ODG, in a prepared statement. “We carefully picked investment partners who not only share ODG’s product vision and growth strategy, but also have the reputation and reach to expand ODG’s global presence and market recognition.”
ODG makes augmented glassess with see-through displays that resemble sunglasses, which could have big potential for uses like manufacturing and construction where you can access checklists or instructions without removing your hands from the work. AR and mixed reality glasses also let you talk to remote exports who can guide you through specific work on site, a use case that has potential to help workers from the space station to the bottom of the ocean.
With the Spectacles camera sunglasses from Snap finding popularity at a low price, existing companies and businesses working in similar areas may be getting a boost now that the technology appears to be maturing. ODG was originally founded in 1999 as a tech incubator, but is now focused on head-mounted displays for government and enterprise.
With CES 2017 in January clearly shaping up to be a big event for ODG, we can’t wait to see what they have to show as the company aims to cover the consumer market as well.
Tagged with: ODG, smart glasses, snap, spectacles, sunglasses
San Francisco based Osterhout Design Group (aka ODG) announced today that they’ve raised a significant $58 million Series A investment to accelerate production and R&D of its smart glasses products.
ODG’s current flagship device is the enterprise-focused R-7 Smartglasses System which sell for $2,750 a pop. The HMD, which has a small ~37 degree field of view compared to most VR headsets, is a self-contained computing device which runs a custom version of Android 4.4 (Kit Kat) and allows users to run a suite of proprietary apps mostly as a heads-up-display type interface, though there is some capacity for headtracking and AR applications in the R-7. It may not be immersive yet, but ODG aspires to make their smart glasses product line into a major augmented reality platform.
The $58 million Series A investment will accelerate production and product R&D, expand patents, and pay for new hires, according to the company. Participating in the investment is Shenzhen O-film Tech Co., Vanfund Urban Investment & Development Co., along with 21st Century Fox and “several individual investors.”
ODG has been focused on custom enterprise solutions up to this point, but as their tech matures and reduces in price, the company has its eyes set on the consumer market as well; AR smartglasses will be the new mobile device everyone carries with them, the company believes.
Next month at CES 2017, ODG plans to reveal their latest product offering, though it isn’t clear yet if it will be a new consumer focused device or a continued iteration of the enterprise focused smart glasses the company has touted up to this point.
ODG’s impressive $58 million raise is sure to afford a major boost in capacity, but there’s no shortage of competition, even at this early stage. The company will be facing off against the likes of AR headset maker Meta, who has secured some $73 million in venture investments, along with Magic Leap, the somehow-still-in-stealth AR headset company that has raised a staggering $1.39 billion. All three companies stand in the looming shadow of HoloLens, backed by Microsoft’s whopping $472 billion market cap.
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