The metaverse applications feel more of a marketing ploy than something that a critical mass of consumers would use. There seems to be a very lucrative opportunity that is well into finding traction. One of the earliest entrants in building solutions for that market is announcing a round of funding to double down.
Varjo, which builds hardware and integrated software for "professional grade" virtual and augmented reality for industrial and other enterprise applications, has raised $40 million, a Series D that it will use to continue R&D for its headsets, as well as to explore further into software applications
A number of big investors out of the region are involved in the financing of the company, which was founded and run by veterans from the failed company of the same name.
They include Atomico, a strategic backer of the Volvo Car Tech Fund, as well as new backers Mirabaud and Foxconn. Varjo describes the latter two as strategic, but it is not known how the Swiss finance and banking giant is working with the company.
According to data from PitchBook, Varjo's last round in 2020 valued it at 146 million dollars, and Toikkanen noted that the new valuation is very positive.
Varjo is notable for being an independent player in a hardware landscape that is dominated by big tech companies, and not one that is prone to gobbling lots of cash to stay that way. I would hazard to say that he and others on the team understand first-hand the value of remaining a smaller company when it comes to innovation, despite the fact that Varjo hasn't been approached by others for acquisition.
He said that they like what they do at this size. There are many advantages to independence. We are able to respond to customer needs quickly.
The independence may have given the company a greater focus. A number of players in the area of XR have been focusing on headsets and applications for consumers and some would argue that the quality of those efforts has been variable.
Some of the companies that have put their money on the B2B opportunity include Meta building enterprise applications, HP, and Byte Dance-owned Pico.
Varjo took a position early on that enterprise customers would be the first to adopt XR products.
Expectations towards metaverse are high for consumers and corporations. Both technology that is easy to use and accurate as well as high-quality software and content are required to meet these expectations. The investment director at T said that Varjo Reality Cloud and the company's other products enable professional, fully virtual work in various sectors. Increasing efficiency and decreasing CO2 emissions from work travel is promoted by this.
Varjo is focused on producing premium, business-critical services and devices and taking an approach that virtual and augmented reality would go hand in-hand as mixed reality. Prescience has been an important factor in the success of the company.
He said that they have never been ahype company. The entry point from the beginning is mixed reality, that's what we've said all along. Everything worked out to be the same. The ultimate incarnation would have to be as good as the real thing. It wouldn't be good enough to have a hologram.
The company makes three different headsets, ranging in price from about $6,500 to $1,500 with additional costs for software subscriptions to use with them, as well as a separate development environments for its Reality Cloud.
It's focus these days is on applications in areas like design and manufacturing, engineering, education, and healthcare, and in addition to Volvo, it's customers include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and many more.
The startup also owns seven patent families related to XR, with the addition of Urho Konttori as Varjo's chief technology officer.
The company has been approached by other tech companies to license that intellectual property, but it has yet to develop that business. Building it into our own products and services is the focus today. You can get access by that.
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