Imverse, a Geneva-based company providing voxel (volumetric pixel) solutions for Live Holograms and Real-Time 3D Graphics, announced that it has raised $4.8M in a Pre-Series A round of funding led by Ariel Luedi’s Hammer Team, with participation from HTC and Logitech.
The company will use the funds to further develop its software platform, expand its team and roll out its products globally.
Javier Bello Ruiz, co-founder, and CEO of Imverse says “For the Metaverse to become a reality we need to overcome a lot of technical hurdles. One of the biggest challenges is making producing 3D content affordable and accessible to everyday consumers and businesses. This is why we believe our voxel breakthrough is so significant. It opens the door to a huge range of new applications, including, for the first time, multiple holograms streaming in real-time. All people need is a few Kinect cameras and a PC and our technology do the rest.”
A volumetric video software company (think Teams or Zoom in 3D with real people)
Founded by Javier Bello Ruiz, and Robin Mange in 2017, Imverse is a 3D graphics software company that offers real-time simulation and modeling tools to edit and transforms 2D pictures into a 3D virtual room-scale environment for live streaming, gaming, and remote work.
Imverse is a spin-off from the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab led by Prof. Olaf Blanke at EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. It has created a telepresence solution that allows users to be teleported and immersed in the Metaverse.
The company’s technology uses a proprietary voxel graphics engine that is capable of live capture, rendering, and streaming of multiple holograms in real-time for telepresence applications. As a result, Imverse can create full-body volumetric humans at the fraction of the cost, without industrial cameras, or powerful computing equipment, and with low latency. This enables the delivery of volumetric content at the same rate as mainstream video conferencing technology such as Zoom or Teams.
The company has a host of use cases, including virtual teleconferencing, immersive education, healthcare, gaming, and the Metaverse. The startup is currently focusing on enterprise solutions.
Imverse Holo enables creators and businesses to set up multi-camera systems for live volumetric video capture with no need for green screens or cloud services.
It is currently compatible with between one and ten Microsoft Azure Kinect cameras connected to a single PC, enabling both real-time and recorded holograms.
Features include 3D videoconferencing, holoportation, and holographic calls. Holoportation, allows remote virtual work, collaboration, and real-time interactive 3D content creation and consumption.
Pearly Chen, Vice President at HTC VIVE, says “We are impressed by the progress made since Imverse first set out to build this technology that enables real-time capture of volumetric pixels.”
She adds, “We look forward to working with the company to explore meaningful use cases that enhance the human experience through the 3D representation of users in virtual meetings, live performances, mixed reality content creation, and beyond.”
Ariel Luedi, Founder of Hammer Team, said: “What Imverse has achieved so far is nothing short of phenomenal. My team and I are excited to offer our experience and support the company along their journey in turning this gem of technology into a game-changing product offering.”