Kakao Ventures made an announcement on the 23rd that it invested $500,000 (about 565.5 million KRW) into a U.S. startup Spatial that develops AR communication solutions.
Spatial is composed of a team that has expertise in AR and user experience, led by CEO Anand Agarawala, who sold 3D software company Bump technology to Google in 2010, and co-founder Lee Jin-ha, the youngest senior researcher at Samsung Electronics. Previously, Spacial received initial investment from Uber founder Garrett Camp, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, and Samsung NEXT (Samsung accelerator).
Spatial is developing AR-based remote collaboration platform. Spatial solutions allow free meetings within user space through peer AR avatars and voice UI. With its own machine learning technology, an avatar is created by 3D computing with just one picture and is then synthesized with AR.
Spatial solutions allow users to build digital work environments in the surrounding three-dimensional space so that all surrounding spaces can be used as idea-making and meeting notes. AR headset such as holo-lens and magic leaf can be used or remote meeting can be participated by using existing web browser without a device. Recently, it is currently piloting a Spatial solution for introducing it to a venture incubator organization called Ford X, which is a global automotive company.
“Spatial combines virtual and real space to create a new way of collaboration that goes beyond time and nature constraints. From now on, we will strive to quickly lead the way in which the concept of computers expands from individuals to groups.
Lee Jin-ha, Co-founder of Spatial
