Category: The VR Fund

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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AR Companies Grew By 50% In The Last Six Months – Report

AR Companies Grew By 50% In The Last Six Months – Report

The augmented reality industry has seen huge growth in the first half of 2018, according to a report from The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund).

The group this week released its bi-annual Global Augmented Reality Landscape overview for the first half of the year, finding that the number of qualified AR companies has increased by 50 percent over the last six months. This is likely due to the increased number of AR-capable smartphones as Apple and Google continue to roll out and refine their respective AR platforms (ARKit and ARCore) on iOS and Android. The image below documents all of the companies acknowledged by The VR Fund to be working in the space right now.

That said, the report notes that consumer-level AR apps haven’t seen huge success on the level that Pokemon Go established two years ago now though growth in this sector is still the largest. More growth came in other categories like AR smart glasses, 3D tools and software development kits (SDKs). Social AR is already seeing heavy usage on platforms like Snap and Facebook.

This report arrives after Magic Leap provided the latest look at its anticipated AR headset, Magic Leap One, earlier this week. The device, which is capable of projecting virtual images into real life spaces, plans to start shipping to developers this summer. How will the industry evolve as more hardware finally arrives?

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Investors Holding Contest For Best Augmented Reality Pitch

Twenty-seven venture capital funds and investors have come together to hold a contest to find the best augmented reality (AR) pitch from impressive startups. The content is dubbed as the Global AR Online Pitch Event and the winning contestant can be sure to gain investment from one or more of the partaking groups.

Global AR Online Pitch Logo

Global AR Online Pitch Event is made up of The GFR Fund, Super Ventures and The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund) who are all come together to put on the Global AR Online Pitch Event. Though the deadline for submissions is April 23rd, the contest is still to run until late May as a number of different stages of review must be carried out until the winner is announced live on stage at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) USA 2018 in Silicon Valley on May 31st, 2018.

After submission period ends and the applications have been reviewed, eight startups will be selected as finalists to present at the online pitch event, which will take place live before investors. Each finalist will be giving five minutes to pitched, followed by two minutes of questions and answers from the selected panel of investors. The finalists will also deliver live pitches at AWE USA 2018 as well, in what can only be guessed to be in front of a live audiences as well.

The finalists will be given some support though, as once selected each finalist will work closely with a mentor to solidify their final presentation prior to the online event. There will also be constructive feedback from key investors and venture capital funds delivered to each finalists.

In order to participate in the Global AR Online Pitch Event, startups must meet the following criteria:

  • Pre-seed, seed or Series A investment
  • Working on a product(s) in AR space
  • Has at least an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

The amount of investment that is up for grabs for the winner is not known yet, but given that each of the investors will contribute towards the amount it is expected to be a large amount. With the recently launch of ARKit and ARCore making it more accessible then ever before to build and deploy AR experiences to the mobile market, it will be interesting to see what pitches come from the Global AR Online Pitch Event. Those looking for more details or to get a last minute submission in can do so at the events website.

VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest from the Global AR Online Pitch in the future so stay tuned for more.

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TheWaveVR Looks To The Future As The Social Platform For Creatives Nets $6 Million In Investment

For every person who says that virtual reality (VR) is dead or dying – and for something people have been saying such about for three years, it’s looking pretty spry  – there seems to be an announcement from a company related to VR, or augmented reality (AR) or mixed reality (MR) that reveals they have been the recipient of investment, have had a recent product purchased or have revealed a new way to develop and utilise the technology.

TheWaveVR

The latest to announce that they are the recipient of investment is TheWaveVR. The social VR platform which revolves around experiences relating to music and visual arts. TheWaveVR collaborates with artists across a variety of genres to bring social VR experiences to a growing community of people, helping them find new friends and discover new music.

Hot on the heels of teaming up with Warner Bros. and HTC Vive to bring to life The Distracted Globe dance club scene from Ready Player One to life and revealing further updates to its Wave Builder content creation tool – which the company used to create a virtual pitch deck within the TheWaveVR platform itself in order to promote itself to potential investors. TheWaveVR has revealed that a new Series A funding round has secured an additional $6 Million (USD), bringing the total investment within the platform to $10 Million. The funding came from a number of different venture capital and VR investment companies, including the likes of Upfront Ventures, The VR Fund and even member of OK Go Andy Ross.

“When Adam and his team pitched us in VR, from within TheWaveVR itself, we saw that the possibilities could go far beyond music,” said Alice Lloyd George, principal at RRE Ventures which was the lead contributor to the funding round for TheWaveVR.  “It’s the most creative experience in VR today and is continually evolving. TheWaveVR is a brilliant venue for concerts, but also much more. We’re already seeing users explore it for other experiences, from digital art to narrative storytelling to business meetings. We’re excited about the product roadmap and their future launch onto other platforms, and thrilled to work alongside this incredible team for their next chapter.”

TheWaveVR iron giant_v2The funds will now be used in order to expand the platform further and help with their future collaborations with artists.  This is in addition to their recent opening of an office in Los Angeles to join the existing one in Austin, Texas.

“The VR ecosystem is approaching a tipping point with the release of Ready Player One. With hardware prices coming down, stand-alone headsets like Oculus Go and Vive Focus on the horizon, and developers discovering best use cases, VR is on a sure path to become mainstream,” said Adam Arrigo, the Co-Founder and CEO of TheWaveVR. “We spent last year nailing down the format for these fully interactive concerts and proved people love our experience; this year we’re focused on how that content gets created and shared.”

VRFocus will have more news about investment throughout the immersive tech space very soon.

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Virtualitics Closes $7M Series B Round to Further Develop VR/AR Data Visualization Platform

Virtualitics, a big data visualization and analytics company, announced the successful close of a $7 million Series B round of equity funding led by investment group Centricus, and participated by existing investor the Venture Reality Fund (‘The VR Fund’) and other private investors. Virtualitics is developing a platform, called Virtualitics Immersive Platform, that melds AI and big data in virtual and augmented reality environments.

The recent investment brings Virtualitics’ total funding to $11.4 million – support for their ongoing mission to use collaborative 3D spaces and AI to better convert big and complex data into useful industry insights.

“With this funding, we will enter the next phase of Virtualitics’ development and continue to unlock the potential of big data through the power of virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence,” said company co-founder and CEO Michael Amori. “We’ve started enabling some of the world’s leading companies to harness transformative insights that provide real competitive advantage for their businesses, and we will continue to onboard customers throughout the course of the year.”

Centricus founders Dalinc Ariburnu and Nizar Al-Bassam, who led the structuring and fundraising for SoftBank’s massive $93 billion global technology investment fund, the Vision Fund. Ariburnu and Al-Bassam will remain on the company Board as advisors.

Check out the video below to get a peek at what the company is building.

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VR Advertising Platform Immersv Completes $10.5m Financing Round

Just over a year ago Immersv announced its advertising platform for virtual reality (VR) and mobile devices with the aim of helping consumers discover VR apps and content. Today, the company has revealed the completion of a $10.5 million USD Series A round of financing.

Led by Rogers Venture Partners, the round also featured institutional and strategic investors such as Foundation Capital, The Venture Reality Fund, Initial Capital, East Ventures, HTC Vive, MCJ Co. Ltd., GREE, i-mobile, Metaps, and Gigi Levy. Rogers Venture Partners General Partner, Paul Sestili, and Gumi’s Founder and CEO, Hironao Kunimitsu, have joined Immersv’s Board of Directors.

Immersvteam2

“Immersv is the leader in the next wave of interactive digital advertising,” said Sestili in a statement. “Mobile 360 and VR advertising provides some of the highest view completion rates, click through rates, and overall engagement rates for both brands and performance advertisers. As the central marketplace for buying and selling these new ad formats, Immersv is well positioned to drive significant value for both advertisers and publishers.”

The new finance will enable Immersv to accelerate product development and deployment, expanding its inventory through direct Publisher as well as SSP integrations, and bring global brands and performance marketers into Mobile 360 and Virtual Reality.

Recently the company signed programmatic deals with more than 15 of the world’s largest Demand Side Platforms (DSP’s) and Supply Side Platforms (SSP’s). Partners now include Tremor Video, YuMe, Bidswitch, ironSource, Supership and United in Japan.

“We’re excited to partner with some of the finest institutional and strategic investors in the world,” said Mihir Shah, President and CEO of Immersv, Inc. “While the mobile video market continues to grow, we believe interactive advertising experiences will displace the current video advertising market in the next few years providing better results for advertisers, higher yield for publishers, and a significantly better experience for consumers.”

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Immersv, reporting back with the latest developments.

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The VR Fund Releases Report on European VR Landscape

The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund) is one of the most prominent venture capital firms working in the virtual reality (VR) an augmented reality (AR) industries. The company has recently released its report detailing the current state of the European VR industry with its EU Landscape Report.

The EU Landscape was created in partnership with WebVR and development agency LucidWeb, and used information gathered from meetings and conferences with VR-focussed companies and VR ambassadors and evangelists.

The significant highlights laid out in the report include the fact that the UK remains the largest contributor of companies to the VR landscape in Europe, with videogaming being the most competitive part of the European VR industry, though enterprise and business-to-business VR technologies are continuing to gain traction, with the number of companies involved in this activity creasing by 55% since last year. Overall, the number of companies featured as part of the European VR landscape has increased by 57% since 2016.

“The VR industry continues to expand in Europe and next to the U.K. and France, Sweden has caught up in terms of the number of high-performing startups across the industry,” said Leen Segers, co-founder and CEO at LucidWeb. “For sub-industries in VR, as with the first version of the EU VR landscape published in early February, the number of companies focusing on user input, 3D tools and enterprise applications are growing quickly. Additionally, young startups in these verticals have easy access to capital, while mature companies in these spaces are more likely to go public or become acquired by major companies like Facebook, Microsoft and Starbreeze.”

“We partnered with LucidWeb again for this landscape because of its invaluable insight into the European VR ecosystem and its strong database of VR startups,” said Tipatat Chennavasin, co-founder and general partner at The VR Fund. “This landscape shows the robust startup environment and we are excited about new innovations emerging from virtually every country in Europe.”

VRFocus will continue to provide news on developments with in the VR industry.

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The Venture Reality Fund Releases Report On AR Industry

The Venture Reality Fund (VR Fund) are one of the biggest venture capital firms that provides funding for companies and projects in the augmented reality (AR, mixed reality (MR) and virtual reality (VR) sectors. The VR Fund has released a report detailing the current state of the landscape for the AR industry.

The VR Fund evaluated over 2,000 companies as part of compiling its report, highlighting over 150 companies that are developing infrastructure, tools, platforms and apps for the AR sector. The report several key areas that have influenced the growth and direction of the AR industry.

The report found that activity in Q2 of 2017 concentrated around creation of device infrastructure and development of software development tools, indicating that the AR industry is still in an early period of development, though there was an increase of more than 60% of the number of companies working in the AR sector from Q1. The VR Fund also discovered that Apple’s entry into the AR sector and the release of the ARKit caused a significant uptick in activity around the Ar industry, as did Facebook’s introduction of its AR camera platform.

ARKit

“Over the past quarter, the AR industry witnessed several notable moves by major players including Facebook and Apple, which immediately led to a robust increase in developer activity as well as extensive coverage in the market,” said Tipatat Chennavasin, co-founder and general partner at The VR Fund. “These strides are reflective of rising interest in AR driven primarily by device infrastructure and SDK tools.”

The report predicts that Apple’s move into the industry will lead to further growth and development of the AR market, with Google and Microsoft further developing their respective Tango and HoloLens technology as a direct response.

The full report can be read on The VR Fund’s website.

VRFocus will continue to report on developments within the VR and AR industry.

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State of VR with the Venture Reality Fund & Why They’re Continuing to Invest

tipatatVirtual Reality Headsets have not sold as many units as some of the more optimistic analysts have predicted, and VR Fund’s Tipatat Chennavasin says that the relatively quick adoption of smartphone technologies have spoiled a lot of people within the investment community. But despite the adoption being slower than some had hoped, Chennavasin still sees a lot of optimistic indicators for the long-term investment of companies that are driving the evolution of the medium in different industry verticals.

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Some of those indicators are a Magid Insights survey that found that a majority of VR consumers “very satisfied” and say product performance exceeds expectations, that there are at least 30 VR games on Steam that have grossed more than $250,000, and that there are a number of enterprise VR companies with revenues between half a million to a million dollars.

I caught up with Chennavasin at the Silicon Virtual Reality Conference on March 31st to talk about the state of the VR ecosystem. We talked about how he sees Chinese investors could be shifting focus to AI and local Chinese companies, the market challenges for educational VR companies, and why he thinks that the lack of revenue in the 360 video could bring a reckoning moment for 360 video technology and content companies.

After traveling to 36 VR conferences over the past year and seeing over 2,000 VR demos, Chennavasin sees some of the most promising VR industry verticals as being healthcare, advertising technology, collaborative meeting and product design apps, enterprise applications, as well as architecture, engineering, and construction. He’s been advising companies try to create applications that could only be done in VR, and that if you build something of value then you can find a way to get someone to pay you for it.

He provides some updates on some of VR Fund’s investments including Owlchemy Labs (which was acquired by Google in May), Against Gravity’s Rec Room, Vivid Vision, and InstaVR. He’s seeing enough positive indicators form his portfolio companies to continue making strategic investments in the VR ecosystem for the long-term path towards more ubiquitous adoption.

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