Category: The Venture Reality Fund

Posted on

Venture Reality Fund II Adds Orange to Investor Roster

Qualcomm

The Venture Reality Fund (VRF) has been an important part of the XR market, investing in some of the best and most innovative companies. Today, the venture-capital firm has revealed that Orange – via its holding company Orange Digital Investment – is investing in the new Venture Reality Fund II.

Venture Reality Fund portfolio
Some of the companies in the Venture Reality Fund portfolio.

With the aim to reach at least $50 million USD, Venture Reality Fund II is looking to invest in at least 35 XR companies taking advantage of 5G. Orange is the first European telecommunications company to invest, building ties as the XR industry looks towards 5G as an important stepping stone to wider adoption in both consumer and enterprise markets.

“We are delighted and honoured to have Orange as a strategic investor in Fund II that will invest in innovative startups to showcase the combined power of 5G networks with XR and AI,” says Marco DeMiroz, co-founder and General Partner of VRF in a statement. “As Orange’s 5G networks deliver unmatched customer experience they also offer brand new services and entertainment for both consumers and enterprises leveraging AI and XR.”

Ultra-high-speed networks (including 5G) and Edge Computing are going to be vital parts to ensure virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) entertainment, training, education, research and collaboration isn’t restrictive, by either cables or location. For example, smart viewers are currently cabled to a smartphone with the eventual goal of being able to send all that data wirelessly.

Marco Demiroz - the venture reality fund
Marco Demiroz. Image credit: The Venture Reality Fund

“Orange’s investment in the Venture Reality Fund II, alongside other major players in the telecoms sector, is an opportunity to create a partnership with a management team that has demonstrated its expertise and agility in a booming ecosystem, which will help to enrich Orange’s offers,” adds Maï de La Rochefordière, Deputy CEO of Orange Digital Investment.

As the VRF continues to develop Venture Reality Fund II, adding more investors and channelling that money into the industry, VRFocus will keep you updated.

Posted on

Venture Reality Fund II Adds Orange to Investor Roster

Qualcomm

The Venture Reality Fund (VRF) has been an important part of the XR market, investing in some of the best and most innovative companies. Today, the venture-capital firm has revealed that Orange – via its holding company Orange Digital Investment – is investing in the new Venture Reality Fund II.

Venture Reality Fund portfolio
Some of the companies in the Venture Reality Fund portfolio.

With the aim to reach at least $50 million USD, Venture Reality Fund II is looking to invest in at least 35 XR companies taking advantage of 5G. Orange is the first European telecommunications company to invest, building ties as the XR industry looks towards 5G as an important stepping stone to wider adoption in both consumer and enterprise markets.

“We are delighted and honoured to have Orange as a strategic investor in Fund II that will invest in innovative startups to showcase the combined power of 5G networks with XR and AI,” says Marco DeMiroz, co-founder and General Partner of VRF in a statement. “As Orange’s 5G networks deliver unmatched customer experience they also offer brand new services and entertainment for both consumers and enterprises leveraging AI and XR.”

Ultra-high-speed networks (including 5G) and Edge Computing are going to be vital parts to ensure virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) entertainment, training, education, research and collaboration isn’t restrictive, by either cables or location. For example, smart viewers are currently cabled to a smartphone with the eventual goal of being able to send all that data wirelessly.

Marco Demiroz - the venture reality fund
Marco Demiroz. Image credit: The Venture Reality Fund

“Orange’s investment in the Venture Reality Fund II, alongside other major players in the telecoms sector, is an opportunity to create a partnership with a management team that has demonstrated its expertise and agility in a booming ecosystem, which will help to enrich Orange’s offers,” adds Maï de La Rochefordière, Deputy CEO of Orange Digital Investment.

As the VRF continues to develop Venture Reality Fund II, adding more investors and channelling that money into the industry, VRFocus will keep you updated.

Posted on

VR Fitness Startup YUR Secures $1.1M Investment, Releases Calorie-counting Software for Quest

YUR, a VR fitness company, today announced it’s secured $1.1 million in pre-seed funding, something the company says will help them to further use VR to address what it considers a ‘worldwide epidemic of sedentary behavior’.

The pre-seed investment round was led by The Venture Reality Fund and BoostVC. A San Francisco-based startup, YUR (pronounced “why you are,”) was founded in early 2019 by Cix Liv and Dilan Shah.

Having launched its pilot program on PC VR earlier this year, YUR is now officially making its software available on Oculus Quest.

The plug-in tracks calories burned while in any VR game or app while using Quest, and also extends to a mobile app that syncs to Apple Health and Google Fit.

Image courtesy YUR

You won’t find YUR on the Oculus Store though, at least not yet. Since it provides an overlay and works in the background while other apps are running, for now the software is only available through Sidequest, the unofficial app store that allows you to side-load unofficially supported games and apps.

SEE ALSO
Ultrahaptics Relaunches as 'Ultraleap' After Leap Motion Acquisition

“We are building YUR to be the Peloton of the future by making fitness a game,” said Cix Liv, co-founder and CEO of YUR. “Gaming and fitness have always been our biggest passions, and we believe there’s a growing community of people who want to combine these two passions as well.”

In addition to calorie-counting and fitness app integration, YUR is setting its sights on some pretty ambitious future usecases. The company says that, in the future, not only do they want their software tell how a player is moving in games, but to one day be able to provide specific health and fitness recommendations via an AI assistant—of course, all of it in the name of fun.

The post VR Fitness Startup YUR Secures $1.1M Investment, Releases Calorie-counting Software for Quest appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

The Venture Reality Fund’s 2019 VR Landscape Highlights 550+ Companies Generating Revenue

Every year San Francisco-based venture capital firm The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund) releases a report on the industry as a whole, detailing the major or most influential players across a range of categories. The new 2019 VR Landscape has just been released, this time based on those who have revenue only, with over 550 companies making the cut.

While it’s positive to see that so many companies are actually generating revenue from virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), the new criteria do mean a lot of new startups and indie studios haven’t mad the cut like they would have done previously.

For 2019 The VR Fund has found major growth areas to be gaming, location-based entertainment (LBE), Next Generation Reality Capture, enterprise, and healthcare. Enterprise VR has been gaining ground in a number of ways, with new dedicated hardware arriving this year in the form of Varjo VR-1, the HP Reverb Pro Edition, and most recently the HTC Vive Pro Eye which went on sale this week. On the software side, Strivr has been training over a million Walmart employees while Gravity Sketch has been helping Ford design cars with Virtualitics helping data scientists at Cedar Sinai save lives.

When it comes to consumer VR 2019 is set to be an exciting year thanks to the upcoming hardware launches for Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift S and Valve Index, while Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is still doing well with PlayStation VR having shipped 4.2 million units and even Nintendo entering the fray with the Labo VR Kit for Switch.

The VR Fund

It’s not just big companies that are succeeding, indie developers like Beat Games are achieving notable results with Beat Saber clearing 1 million sales, SUPERHOT VR doing better than the non-VR version, and big franchises coming to headsets like Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs from Rovio Entertainment and Resolution Games (Bait!).

The VR Fund notes that over $500 million has been invested in the VR and AR ecosystems since the beginning of 2019 – although a big part of that was Magic Leap’s $280M from NTT Docomo.

It has been a positive start to the first half of the year with adoption expected to increase as the year continues. For further updates on the VR/AR industries, keep reading VRFocus.

Posted on

The Venture Reality Fund Release Their H1 2018 VR Landscape

Following on from the success of Beat Saber by Beta Games, the Venture Reality Fund has announced that it is releasing its first half 2018 virtual reality (VR) landscape highlighting 10% overall growth. This sees the most activity in location-based entertainment, gaming, enterprise and healthcare, showcasing that VR is continuing to grow in size and success.

Beat Saber Arcade Machine - Screenshot

Beat Saber, which has become one of the fastest selling VR videogames to date and has a large active community, has also moved out of the home environment and into arcades. The Venture Reality Fund notes that the title is now features in 168 arcades in 24 countries with many hosting tournaments, making the title a new entry in the eSports scene. With the PlayStation VR release on the way, the Venture Reality Fund expects the title to be one of the most successful VR videogames to date.

For location-based entertainment the Venture Reality Fund notes that the The VOID and Sandbox VR are continuing to expand, with major sector players such as SPACES and Two Bit Circus having successful launches. This follows on from IMAX VR having closed down two of its locations, even with the sector seeing growth.

Ralph Breaks VR

Touching on the enterprise side of the market, the Venture Reality Fund adds that the sector is seeing VR prove to be a valuable resource providing impressive results for the like’s of Walmart, Wendy’s and other companies. LikeVantage Point are also noted for showing how VR can be used to tackle some of today’s biggest issues including sexual harassment within the workplace. All of this helps to show that the industry and technologies are continuing to grow and provide immersive experiences to consumers around the world.

The Venture Reality Fund focuses on early-stage investments in immersive, spatial and intelligent computing for consumers and enterprises, and as part of their commitment to educating and strengthening the ecosystem, they publish regular VR and augmented reality (AR) landscapes which details growth, emerging terns, and increased international impact, such as the above.

For more on all things VR and AR in the future including future Venture Reality Fund landscapes, keep reading VRFocus to stay up to date on all the latest.

Posted on

Apprentice.io Secures Multi-Million Dollar Series A Funding

New Jersey augmented reality (AR) firm Apprentice.io is the latest immersive technology company to announce the results of a funding round, this time Series A, led by Pritzker Group Venture Capital and which also saw investment from Silverton Partners and Hemi Ventures as well as another name common to these types of stories The Venture Reality Fund.

The funding round saw the firm, secure an additional $8 million (USD) in funding. Bringing the total raised by the company so far to over $10 million.

Apprentice.io has developed Apprentice – an AR and artificial intelligence (AI) platform for batch records, tech transfer and R&D workflows as well as training procedures, with particular use to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Apprentice offers support ARKit 2 on iPhone XS as well as ARCore for Android devices, plus already has support for HoloLens, Magic Leap and other AR focused smart glasses. Subsequent growth has seen the start-up triple in size.

“We like to say that we don’t just augment reality; we augment human ability,” said Angelo Stracquatanio, the co-founder and CEO of Apprentice.io in a statement on the investment. “AR and AI are changing the way workforces across all industries solve problems and share information, ushering in the next wave of human potential.”

Vice President of the Pritzker Group Venture Capital added on his firm’s financial involvement: “We are absolutely thrilled to be collaborating with the leader in AR and AI. Angelo and his team of experts have a clear vision for what will be the next generation of enterprise AR. It was among the many reasons we were eager to invest at this stage.”

VRFocus will have more news about investment in the AR industry very soon.

Posted on

The Venture Reality Fund Releases Report on Global Augmented Reality Landscape

The Venture Reality Fund are one of the best-known names in venture capital for the immersive technology sector, focussing mostly on early-stage investments in areas of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR). The firm has today released its report on the first half of 2018 and how the global AR landscape has been affected.

The report reveals that mobile-based AR apps and content for both Apple and Google-powered handsets has undergone the most substation growth, but consumer interest is still somewhat lacking beyond high-profile apps such as Pokemon Go.

Pokemon GO ARKit

“With more than $1B so far this year, global investment in VR and AR is still very strong,” says Tipatat Chennavasin, co-founder and general partner at The VR Fund. “And while AR is getting more attention lately, the number of deals is fairly evenly split between VR and AR.”

The report also found that several major technology companies have been releasing tools that help developers and creators build more in-depth AR experiences. This includes obvious candidates such as Apple and Google, but also Snap, Facebook, Niantic Labs, Adobe and start-ups like Blue Vision Labs, who have all unveiled tools for mobile AR development.

According to the report, there has been a trend in non-technology companies acquiring AR technology companies, with examples including L’Oreal and Williams Sonoma, displaying that many firms believe that AR will have significant impact on customer engagement.

Social AR has become a large category, the report notes, with heavy usage of AR features in apps such as Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. Last year, Snap reported that almost 70 million users spend an average of three minutes a day with AR lenses.

There was notable growth across all categories of AR, with particular note paid to smartglasses, 3D tools and SDKs, all of which had implications for enterprise application.

The full text of the report can be found on The Venture Reality Fund website. As usual, VRFocus will continue to bring you the latest developments in the VR industry.

Posted on

InstaVR Raises $5M Series B to Further Grow Its Enterprise VR Authoring Platform

InstaVR, a VR authoring, publishing, and analysis company, announced it has successfully closed a Series B financing round, which the company says will help further its mission in providing enterprise customers the tools to create their own VR apps. The company received $5 million, bringing its total funding to date to $7.2 million. Series B participants include YJ Capital, ITOCHU Technology Ventures, Mizuho Capital Partners, GREE Ventures, COLOPL NEXT, and The Venture Reality Fund.

InstaVR boasts that its software suite can help businesses “quickly and easily author interactive 360-degree VR apps and publish them for all major VR headsets, as well as desktop and mobile devices with a single click.” InstaVR’s no-coding approach to VR content creation aims to make content authoring and publishing on multiple VR platforms a simple process.

The company says in a recent blogpost that since its release in 2016, over 30,000 clients have used InstaVR to publish 200,000+ VR pieces of content, with clients including Toyota, Hilton, TUI Group, PwC, US Navy, and GOV.UK.

The company says the new funding round will be used to expand the InstaVR team and further invest in the company’s enterprise offering, InstaVR Central, which is aimed at larger businesses looking for VR-based employee training.

“As VR has gained more widespread adoption, companies are seeing the value of utilizing the technology for creating impactful and memorable immersive experiences, such as new employee onboarding and ongoing training,” said InstaVR Founder Daniel H. Haga. “This round of funding helps InstaVR accelerate our plans to empower major corporations and organizations to more fully realize the benefits of VR.”

Businesses looking to try the software for free can sign up here, which includes support for Gear VR and Android/iOS Cardboard. The full, paid suite can output to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Google Daydream, Gear VR, Oculus Go, Android/iOS Cardboard and standard monitors.

The post InstaVR Raises $5M Series B to Further Grow Its Enterprise VR Authoring Platform appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

InstaVR Raises $5M Series B to Further Grow Its Enterprise VR Authoring Platform

InstaVR, a VR authoring, publishing, and analysis company, announced it has successfully closed a Series B financing round, which the company says will help further its mission in providing enterprise customers the tools to create their own VR apps. The company received $5 million, bringing its total funding to date to $7.2 million. Series B participants include YJ Capital, ITOCHU Technology Ventures, Mizuho Capital Partners, GREE Ventures, COLOPL NEXT, and The Venture Reality Fund.

InstaVR boasts that its software suite can help businesses “quickly and easily author interactive 360-degree VR apps and publish them for all major VR headsets, as well as desktop and mobile devices with a single click.” InstaVR’s no-coding approach to VR content creation aims to make content authoring and publishing on multiple VR platforms a simple process.

The company says in a recent blogpost that since its release in 2016, over 30,000 clients have used InstaVR to publish 200,000+ VR pieces of content, with clients including Toyota, Hilton, TUI Group, PwC, US Navy, and GOV.UK.

The company says the new funding round will be used to expand the InstaVR team and further invest in the company’s enterprise offering, InstaVR Central, which is aimed at larger businesses looking for VR-based employee training.

“As VR has gained more widespread adoption, companies are seeing the value of utilizing the technology for creating impactful and memorable immersive experiences, such as new employee onboarding and ongoing training,” said InstaVR Founder Daniel H. Haga. “This round of funding helps InstaVR accelerate our plans to empower major corporations and organizations to more fully realize the benefits of VR.”

Businesses looking to try the software for free can sign up here, which includes support for Gear VR and Android/iOS Cardboard. The full, paid suite can output to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Google Daydream, Gear VR, Oculus Go, Android/iOS Cardboard and standard monitors.

The post InstaVR Raises $5M Series B to Further Grow Its Enterprise VR Authoring Platform appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Eight Finalists For Global AR Online Pitch Revealed

Sometimes in order for something to truly succeed and create something bigger you have to work together. This is true in any line of business, even the immersive technology sector. After all where would the Gear VR – arguably virtual reality’s (VR’s) most prolific headset – be, without the partnership between both Samsung and Oculus? It’d certainly be a very different industry.

Global AR Online Pitch LogoNear the end of last month VRFocus reported on the Global AR Online Pitch, an event put together by three of the biggest investment names in the field of augmented reality (AR): The GFR Fund, Super Ventures and The Venture Reality Fund (a.k.a The VR Fund).  Open to submissions from all around the world, the aim of the Global AR Online Pitch’s goal was to give an unprecedented opportunity to developers to secure funding for their AR related developments. Now, some 241 submissions later, eight finalists have been announced.

They are:

  • ARwall – A Los Angeles based company. It has created the first AR display that requires no headset, goggles or smart device.
  • Cortex Core – Created by Binary Bubbles, Inc., is a codeless content management system that enables IP owners to maintain a strong and personal relationship with their consumers through always-on, world-aware digital AR characters.
  • DeepAR – A powerful face-tracking, face FX and deep learning SDK that allows any app to integrate advanced, Snapchat-like face lenses in hours. The most advanced AR Advertising SDK on the market, DeepAR currently powers over 50 million users each month through its integration with top ad networks.
  • JigSpace – Creates and shares interactive, 3D knowledge for anything.
  • Infiniverse – Connects the entire world’s digital space into a single, persistent, virtual AR world. The augmented reality land registry, content distribution platform and marketplace runs on the blockchain.
  • Insider Navigation (INS) – The first company that offers augmented-reality based indoor positioning and navigation for mobile devices.
  • PLNAR – An Austin, TX, AR startup that optimizes the settlement of home interior property claims (flood, water, fire). PLNAR generates fully measured, detailed 3D models and material summaries of rooms using augmented reality. (Read more about them here.)
  • SentiAR – Developing the first real-time AR software platform for interventional procedures on the HoloLens. Initially focused on catheter ablation procedures treating cardiac arrhythmia, the company aims to significantly change clinical practices.

Not only will all eight be pitching to investors, they will also be a part of the forthcoming Augmented World Expo (AWE) 2018, taking place in Silicon Valley from May 30th to June 1st. Taking to the stage to present to attendees.

“There is a huge advantage for companies to be able to pitch key investors without spending the time and money required to go on a roadshow,” commented GFR Fund CEO Teppei Tsutsui. “The AR Online Pitch event puts every startup on a level playing field and lets the entrepreneurs, and their vision and innovation, speak for itself.”

VRFocus will continue to bring you news on the event as well as updates from AWE 2018 at the end of the month. Be sure to look out for those.