A List – Augmented Reality And Venture Capital Funding
Investment in augmented reality development is one key to our industry’s success. So we thought we’d aggregate, and share a list of our industry’s “success stories”. We’d like this list to not only be about the developers that are getting venture capital funding, but the large corporations that are validating the space by investing their resources/money towards AR as well.
As you can see, the space is starting to heat up.
We’ll try to update this list regularly, so please feel free to add anything I’m missing in the comments.
- Total Immersion gets $5.5M to expand augmented reality (Link)
- Layar Augments Reality With $14M in New Funding (Link)
- Tonchidot Raises $12 Million Round B, Expands Augmented Reality/Social Gaming Platform SoLAR Globally (Link)
- EU backs ST-Ericsson to deliver augmented reality (Link)
- Google, Apple Making Augmented Reality Cool Amid CES (Link)
- Microsoft And TechStars Launch Kinect Accelerator For New Kinect-Based Startups (Link)
- Qualcomm opens submissions for its $200,000 Augmented Reality Developer Challenge (Link)
- Blippar raises seed funding from Qualcomm for mobile augmented reality technology (Link)
- Gamma III structures first round funding of Mobilizy GmbH (Makers of Wikitude) (Link)
- HP Acquires Control of Autonomy Corporation (Makers of Aurasma) (Link)
- Augmented Reality App Maker CrowdOptic Scores $500,000 In New Funding (Link)
- More funding news in Poland: augmented reality game ShootAR is backed by IIF (Link)
- 110 Stories: Augmented Reality Twin Towers iPhone App (Link)
- GoldRun Scores Funding for Mobile Discovery/AR App (Link)
- DARPA’s next-gen wearable display: augmented-reality, holographic sunglasses (Link)
- AR Developers Ogmento Raise $3.5M for Augmented Gaming Apps (Link)
Tags: Apple, augmented reality, Aurasma, Blippar, CrowdOptic, Gamma III, GoldRun, Google, HP, Kinect, layar, Microsoft, Mobilizy, Qualcomm, ShootAR, ST-Ericsson, Techstars, Tonchidot, Total Immersion, Venture Capital, Wikitude
Most of these investments seem to be in software platforms and applications, with the exception being Google, Apple, and DARPA research programs aimed at developing new hardware technologies. I’m not sure if this confirms whether AR software is ready for mass adoption, or if it is a sign that there are still many hardware requirements that still need to be met before AR can truly take off and transform personal media. Any thoughts?
January 24th, 2012 at 11:11 pmNice summary so far. Since we’re also interested in AR Games I remember this news about Ogmento: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ar_developers_ogmento_raise_35m_for_augmented_gaming_apps.php
January 25th, 2012 at 12:31 amAny other (AR game) developers that got some money?
Cheers, Rainer
@Rainer – Nice catch. Thank you, I’ve updated the list. I can’t believe I forgot our friends at Ogmento. My bad…
@Michael – When it comes to mass adoption, I don’t think that the average person cares about AR software, they care about experiences that improve their lives. I think when we look at the mobile space, the hardware definitely needs to be improved to provide those types of experiences. You need both though. It’s a balancing act, as the hardware needs to be built with the software/experience in mind… So you need teams working on both “problems”… and ideally, working together. At any rate, it’s great to see money going towards making it happen.
January 27th, 2012 at 10:09 amThanks for the feedback. AR really caught my eye at the CES this year and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about where it will be in the near future, especially considering the rate that mobile computing hardware has been advancing.
February 1st, 2012 at 3:52 pm