Category: vr investment

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VR Design Tool ‘Gravity Sketch’ Raises $1.7 Million With Participation from Wacom

Gravity Sketch, a concepting & design tool made for VR, has raised $1.7 million in venture capital.

Gravity Sketch, which allows VR users to quickly and easily sketch out 3D industrial design concepts, today announced that the company has raised a $1.7 million seed investment, according to UKTN. The seed round was led by VC firm Forward Partners, with participation by Super Ventures and Wacom.

Wacom is a leading provider of digital design hardware, best known for its high-precision graphics tablets and similar touch & stylus input technology; it’s a big name in the design space, and a strong vote of confidence for Gravity Sketch.

The Gravity Sketch app launched in Early Access on Steam back in August of 2017. While not tremendously well rated by the Steam audience at present, I’ve spoken with one veteran industrial designer who said that the program is a revelation for sketching out 3D designs and rapidly iterating upon them.

Matthew Bradley from Forward Partners, who has joined the Gravity Sketch board as part of the deal, told UKTN that he believes the company’s solution fills a niche not served by CAD tools.

Designing anything that is physical which is at all massive—whether it’s a car, a shoe, a building—is a complicated and old fashioned process. CAD is great but fussy and extremely detailed. What the team at Gravity Sketch has achieved is complementary to existing top-class CAD software yet will achieve huge efficiencies and improvements in the design process. It’s the best use of VR in the enterprise that I’ve ever seen.

The company has also offers a Gravity Sketch design app for the iPad.

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Social VR Sports Viewing Platform livelike Raises $9.6 Million

Social VR sports viewing startup livelike has announced a Series B investment of $9.6 million.

Livelike is building a social sports viewing platform for VR and AR devices. The company’s product focuses on connecting remote users into ‘virtual suite’ where they can watch a live sports game projected outside the window (as if watching it from a stadium skybox), along with virtual screens showing stats, different angles, replays, and more. The company hopes to create a “new, interactive, communal way of watching live sports”

I was impressed when I got a chance to see an early version of their tech back in 2015. The company went on to raise a $5 million Series A round in 2016, and this week announced a $9.6 million Series B investment, bringing in investors Greycroft Partners and Lepe Partners, among others.

“LiveLike will utilize its new investment to expands its partnerships, and further build out its product and platform to make it even simpler and frictionless for users,” the company explained in its investment announcement. “This will include creating increased cross-platform compatibility, an evolved user interface to make content discovery even more intuitive, and new in-product experiences—such as fantasy sports integrations—designed to spark additional social interactions. Moreover, it will look to build new compelling advertising opportunities that enable marketers to connect with sports fans in groundbreaking ways.”

Image courtesy livelike

Livelike is developing its offering as a white label platform, allowing various sports and event producers to link their broadcasts into the virtual suite, and provide unique branding to fit the broadcaster, sport, and teams on the field. The company says that both FOX Sports and the French Tennis Federation are among the companies they’ve worked with thus far, and have created VR experiences using their tech for Super Bowl LI, UEFA Champions League Final, NCAA Basketball Big East Tournament, and the French Open.

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Gree VR Capital Completes First $18M VR/AR Fund, Changes Name to GFR Fund

GREE VR Capital, the investment firm backing startups such as VRChat, TheWaveVR, and Littlstar, today announced the completion of its first immersive media fund, totaling $18.3 million in allocated funds. Previously called GVR Fund, the company is now changing its name to GFR Fund as it prepares for a second fund later this year.

The fund has invested in 17 early stage companies over the course of its two-year existence, primarily in the North American VR/AR/MR market. According to a press release provided to Road to VR, the fund will be “actively seeking AR and MR startup companies for investment with a particular focus on mobile AR platforms, AR Cloud, consumer AR applications, and enterprise AR, including AR glasses.”

GREE VR says the team is continuing with its focus on helping U.S. startup companies looking to reach out to Japanese investors and market leaders. The name change, the company says, broadens the fund’s scope to more than just VR, putting more emphasis on ‘frontier technology’, a term intended to encompass VR/AR/MR.

“GFR invested in our Series A round and has been instrumental in helping our company grow both in the U.S. and Asia,” said Tony Mugavero, co-founder and CEO of VR video streaming platform Littlstar. “They brought us to Japan in 2016 and introduced us to nearly a dozen accredited investors, helped us secure Sony and others as new investors, and lined up a speaking engagement for us at the Japan VR Summit. The connections and visibility that GFR was able to bring to us has been critical in making Littlstar the success that it is and has afforded us the opportunity to expand into new markets.”

To date, the GFR Fund has invested in 17 companies, including VRChat, SPACES, Sliver.tv, Littlstar, Insidemaps, YBVR, Immersv, Experiment 7, TheWaveVR, Sturfee, InsiteVR, Streem, DottyAR, Upload and Torch3D. In addition to GREE, Colopl VR Fund, mixi, Inc., Maruhan, Yahoo Japan and Akatsuki are among Limited Partners (LPs) of the fund.

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Vreal Closes $11.7 Million Series A Funding, Chet Faliszek Signs on to Board of Directors

Vreal, a VR livestreaming and social broadcast platform, today announced the closure of a $11.7 million Series A funding round led by Axioma Ventures, along with new investors Intel Capital and AET Fund. Existing participating investors include Upfront Ventures, Vulcan Capital and CRCM Ventures.

Vreal says they’ll be using the funds to further develop and launch their platform, which allows you to livestream VR playsessions to fans while they watch and interact in a social VR environment. Outside of ‘native’ VR broadcasting, Vreal also lets you record and revisit playsessions, set up cameras to broadcast to 2D platforms, and record streams in 360 degrees.

Now with a total of $15 million in funds, Vreal is also bringing two industry veterans to its board of directors; Chris M. Williams, founder and CEO of the new kids’ media company pocket.watch, and Chet Faliszek. Faliszek, who will be representing Axioma Ventures at Vreal, spent 12 years at Valve, and has writing credits on Half-Life 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead series and more, not to mention his instrumental work on SteamVR.

“As VR becomes more accessible, so will the need for compelling VR broadcast content that moves beyond simple 360 video,” said Faliszek. “Viewers will demand the freedom they have in VR games to be in their viewing experiences.”

Vreal is currently working with content creators and networks such as Rooster Teeth, Machinima, and Hyper RPG in effort to further refine the platform so that it appeals to gamers.

“VR is an immersive medium, and Vreal is the only way for viewers to step inside someone else’s VR gameplay and enjoy VR content the way it’s meant to be experienced.” said Todd Hooper, Founder and CEO of Vreal. “Immersive virtual worlds are the future of gaming, and we’re building the highway that will take viewers to curated gameplay experiences, all alongside their friends and favorite gaming personalities.”

Vreal is currently in closed alpha testing. You can sign up to be a future alpha tester here.

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Walmart’s Tech Incubator Store No. 8 Acquires VR Startup Spatialand

Wal-Mart, the big-box retail giant, unveiled its Store No. 8 tech startup incubator last year with the aim of researching and investing in emergent tech like AR and VR. Now, Store No. 8 has acquired Spatialand, a startup that has created a platform and toolset for enterprise companies to create VR content.

In addition to her duties as Principal & Founder Store No. 8, Katie Finnegan will be signing on as interim CEO of Spatialand, according to a Wal-Mart blog post.

Spatialand initially worked with Store No. 8 last year to create the Wal-Mart incubator’s VR gala, Innov8, which the company says culminated in a proof of concept VR experience for how they think “millions may shop in the future.”

Finnegan says the new venture will operate in stealth with Spatialand’s Kim Cooper and Store No. 8 consultant Jeremy Welt as co-founders. The team, Finnegan says, will “develop and explore new products and uses of VR through immersive retail environments that can be incorporated by all facets of Walmart, online and offline.”

Kim Cooper is a two-time Emmy nominee and under her leadership, Spatialand’s VR platform has created projects for Oculus, Intel, Reebok and Linkin Park.

Jeremy Welt, a VR strategy and product advisor, helped launch YouTube’s first commercial deal to working on the Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of Maker Studios. He has also been a consultant for 360 video app company Splash and Mindshow, the VR movie creator tool.

 

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Positron Closes $1.4 Seed Funding to Develop Next Generation of Its VR Motion Chair

Positron, a Los Angeles-based VR technology studio, announced at Sundance that it closed a $1.4 million seed funding deal to further develop the next generation of the company’s VR motion chair, Voyager. Funding was provided by Lazar Ventures co-founders Cathleen Ihasz and Nicole Ihasz, and OWC.

Voyager was used at Sundance 2018 to debut the world premiere of Felix & Paul Studios’ space-themed VR experience made in collaboration with NASA, Space Explorers: A New Dawn. An earlier prototype of the chair premiered at last year’s Sundance, and was later used in The Mummy Zero Gravity Stunt Experience with Tom Cruise.

the 2017 prototype of Voyager, image courtesy Positron

Positron says on their website that the Voyager VR chair platform has a full range of yaw motion (360 degree turning) with 35 degrees of pitch motion (reclining). The chair also contains a built-in PC with GTX 1070 GPU to drive the experience. As seen at Sundance, the viewing experience can be synchronized across a number of Voyager chairs for ‘communal’ viewing.

Jennifer Rundell, Positron COO and co-founder, says the investment will allow the company to further develop their  Voyager platform “to include state-of-the-art features such as interactivity, 6 DoF tracking, scent, wind, and AI motion tracking.”

The company says Voyager VR chairs will be coming to cinemas, VR centers, hotels, museums and airports later this year as part of the launch of the Voyager Network, an out-of-home distribution network for premium VR.

 

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Oculus-funded VR Experience ‘SPHERES’ Sold at Sundance in “Seven-Figure Deal”

SPHERES, a three-chapter space experience from Darren Aronofsky’s Protozoa Pictures, was just bought by VR finance and distribution firm CityLights in what Variety describes as a “seven-figure deal.”

While the respective companies are remaining mum on the exact price of the acquisition, the Variety report maintains the deal was in “the low- to mid-seven figures.”

Songs Of Spacetime, the first chapter of Spheres, debuted at Sundance as a part of Oculus’ five funded experiences.

Written and directed by Eliza McNitt, Spheres is an experience that explores sound while taking you to the heart of a black hole. Speaking to Oculus in a recent ‘VR Visionaries’ profile, McNitt called Spheres a story about “the human connection to the cosmos,” and how we relate to the sound of the universe—gravitational waves.

“…as I dove into research and the science behind the project, I learned that the discovery of gravitational waves won the Nobel in physics, so that was a huge part of the development of this project. I wanted to capture the most cutting-edge scientific discovery, and, in fact, that was this idea of sound. The title is inspired by the ancient philosophical theory called the Music of the Spheres, that predicted that celestial bodies created a form of music—and we truly did prove that with the discovery of gravitational waves.

Spheres is also packed with talent, with narration by Jessica Chastain (The Martian, Interstellar, The Zookeeper’s Wife) and music by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of electronica band Survive (The Stranger Things theme song).

“We’re incredibly excited to work with Eliza and the entire team on Spheres,” CityLights co-founder Joel Newton told Variety. “The ambition and generative nature of the vision for Spheres perfectly fits with our mission to bring content to broader audiences and showcase the types of experiences only VR can deliver.”

Spheres is slated to arrive on Rift in the coming months, with a launch on other VR platforms to follow.

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Investors Poured a Record $2 Billion into VR/AR in 2017, But Early Stage Funding Slowed

In 2017, venture funding of VR/AR companies reached at least $1.9B, ending slightly above 2016. The total number of companies raising venture capital during 2017 outpaced 2016, but the average deal size declined sharply by 35%, according to Greenlight Insights’ annual year-end analysis of individual venture capital deals dating back to 2011.

Each year, Greenlight Insights compiles and qualifies data from private and public sources across North America, Europe, and Asia in order to assess the global venture funding landscape surrounding the VR/AR industry. In 2017, Greenlight Insights analyzed more than 300 individual deals, excluding outlier financings, such as StarVR ($5M in Q4), Unity ($400M in Q2), and Improbable ($502M in Q2).

“The aggregate increase in VR/AR venture deal activity is encouraging, but the reality is that 2017 was tough for most startups in the space,” said Clifton Dawson, CEO at VR/AR market research firm Greenlight Insights.

Similar to past years, the majority of deals in 2017 were early stage (Seed and Series A). The number of early stage deals in 2017 was up 27% YoY and 105 companies raised $2M or more from VCs. However, the average Seed and Series A deal size declined 9% and 17%, respectively.

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

It may look like virtual and augmented reality’s growth spurt is abating, but it’s important to remember that companies still raised triple the amount of dollars compared to just three years ago.

“A moderating deal size of early stage companies should be viewed as a positive indicator of a healthy funding environment and partly tracks with the larger venture investment picture of 2017,” said Natalie Yue, a Data Analyst with Greenlight Insights that worked on the analysis.

The complete year-end analysis is available as a supplement to the 2017 Virtual Reality Industry Report, which was co-published with Road to VR.

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SyncThink Closes $3.5 Million Series A Funding to Further Develop VR-based Concussion Detection

SyncThink, a Berkeley-based eye-tracking and brain firm, announced the closing of a $3.5 million Series A-1 funding round led by Quadrant Management. The company expects to use the funds to continue development on their EYE-SYNC technology, a VR-based eye-tracking technology to help diagnose concussions on the playing field.

On-field concussion detection is still woefully primitive, contends the company, largely relying on the traditional ‘follow my finger’ routine to determine if someone is concussed or not. Using a GearVR with embedded eye-tracking tech, the company says their Eye-Sync technology is able to view and analyze ocular-motor impairment—one of the big clues in diagnosing concussion. As a part of a larger diagnostic platform, Eye-Sync is said to quickly diagnose brain health via ocular-motor, ocular-vestibular, SCAT 5, and BESS assessments.

image courtesy SyncThink

“The EYE-SYNC technology was initially developed to identify changes in brain function after injury, however its application has evolved significantly in recent years, and we intend to leverage our core technology to expand the many ways we can help people get the most out of their daily life activities,” founder and Stanford Neurosurgeon Dr. Jamshid Ghajar stated.

The company says the Series A funding round “marks the next step for SyncThink to assist medical professionals in making objective decisions on the sidelines of sports fields, in clinics, and beyond.” The company’s Eye-Sync tech received FDA clearance in 2016 to record, view, and analyze eye movements in support of visual tracking impairments. SyncThink also boasts partnerships with the Pac-12 Conference, the University of Texas, and the NBA Champion Golden State Warriors.

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NGCodec Closes $8M Series A Investment, Aiming to Make Low Latency Cloud-based VR a Reality

NGCodec, a cloud video processing company creating low latency codecs for video and interactive VR, announced the closure of an $8 million Series A funding round, bringing their total funds to $15.9 million. Investors in the most recent funding round include Belmore Capital, Xilinx and the National Science Foundation.

Since its founding in 2012, NGCodec has been developing the compressor-decompressor technology optimized for ultra-low latency, high-quality video encoding. Now dialing in on virtual reality, the company has created what it calls Reality Codec, a low delay H.265/HEVC encoder that aims to deliver cloud-rendered VR applications and transmit them fast enough to bring what they call “PC class performance to any head-mounted display.”

The company says their RealityCodec VR streaming technology, which renders 90 frames per second and “scales to meet the increasing resolution and frame rate demands of next generation headsets,” is accomplished by converting video output to compressed video streams for rapid transmission to VR headsets.

“We have worked diligently to bring our advanced video codecs to the Amazon Cloud and to demonstrate the potential for cloud media and virtual reality.” said Oliver Gunasekara CEO and Co-Founder of NGCodec. “Closing our Series A round will propel our technology into the 5G era, bringing our total raised to $15.9M from world-class institutions including Xilinx, Belmore Capital and NSF.”

The company says they’ll be migrating to their upcoming AV1 codec implementation later in 2018 for “even higher compression.”

NGCodec is currently demonstrating their RealityCodec at this year’s CES at the NSF booth in Eureka Park, Sands Expo Level 1 Hall G, Booth Number 50322. We’ve had a chance to talk at length with the company, and will be bringing you a deeper dive into their tech in the coming days.

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