Oct 20, 2020

Today, Vectary announced a funding round of $7.3mn , led by EQT Ventures. Others joining the round include previous investor Blueyard and a number of new angels like Framer-founder Koen Bok. Vectary, a browser-based 3D and AR design and publishing platform, is now used by more than one million creators worldwide and more than a thousand digital agencies and creative studios to provide 3D content to millions of users. With the pandemic shifting more of our lives online, Vectary has seen a 300% increase in AR views as more businesses started showcasing their products in 3D and Augmented Reality. I personally love shopping online. However, 85% of people still prefer to go to brick and mortar stores to see the products they’re considering buying in real life before making a purchasing decision. While many users reluctantly turned to e-commerce during covid-induced lockdowns, with global revenue from online sales skyrocketing 71% year-over-year in H2 2020, others are still struggling to take the leap and buy without experiencing the product first. A company that has embraced the need to move online is Dutch brand Van Moof , which has been soaring over the last few months. Not only are more consumers now turning to e-bikes as a mode of transport, but Van Moof has ensured that the magic of its bikes can be experienced from people’s living rooms. While sitting on their sofas, customers can use their phones to project the Van Moof bikes directly into the space right next to them, viewing it in 3D and checking it out from all angles as if they were in a physical store. All with the help of Vectary . Vectary’s co-founders Pavol Sovis and Michal Koor Developed in Bratislava, Vectary is a product built by designers for designers. Michal Koor and Pavol Sovis, Vectary’s co-founders, have brought together decades of design and technology experience to build a browser-based 3D and AR design and publishing platform, whose vision is to enable everyone — not just designers — to access and use 3D/AR for web and mobile. Vectary was created as a result of the frustrations experienced firsthand by the team. While working as an industrial designer, Michal recognised the complexity of using and sharing content created by traditional 3D design tools was a huge barrier to adoption. He was keen to work out a way in which designers could get results without spending hours researching and learning how to use traditional tools. He invested time into developing an accessible, easy-to-use option and Vectary was born. At EQT Ventures, we believe 3D will be the next big type of content. Only now is hard- and software enabling a wide range of applications for 3D content. This year, 100 million people will shop using AR. We’re now standing at the beginning of a fundamental shift in design and the solution poised to become the industry standard for such a shift must hit the market now while people are testing new hardware and software solutions. We believe the Vectary team, who have developed all the hard-to-build, foundational technologies over the last six years, are in the perfect position to ride this wave and become the design winner in this 3D era. The company has all the building blocks in place to evolve into the one platform defining this 3D/AR shift and unlock the full potential of 3D. While big technology players such as Microsoft, Facebook and Apple are democratizing 3D content consumption, Vectary believes that seamless 3D/AR content creation and sharing will be key to mainstream adoption. With Vectary’s online and device independent offering, designers and creatives can build their own 3D graphics from scratch, apply 3D design on a 2D object in Figma or Sketch, create 3D customizers in Webflow with Embed API or add 3D interactivity to decks. In addition, the Vectary infrastructure enables users to view 3D projects on any device, collaborate on 3D projects in the browser, embed 3D on any website or view content in AR using smartphones or smart glasses. “3D will eventually outpace 2D,” Vectary-CEO Michal Koor stated in one of our discussions with him. “Understanding the shape, depth and scale of objects is particularly important when choosing and purchasing products and soon having 3D content on a site will be as familiar as having a JPEG image is now.” Impressed by the team’s rigour and the levels of excitement they’d already triggered amongst designers worldwide, we’re now joining the Vectary team on their journey. Vectary is proving that 3D and AR experiences are what will drive the web forwards. Pavol, Michal and the whole team are incredibly product-driven and have a true passion for design. They’ve created a fantastic product, with a beautiful user interface, that can be used by beginners and 2D designers, as well as more experienced 3D designers. There are huge opportunities ahead and we’re excited to be a part of making design history with Vectary EQT Ventures is leading a $7.3 million round, with existing investor BlueYard and a number of new angels like Framer-founder Koen Bok joining us. Due to COVID-19, we’ve yet to meet the Vectary team in real life but we’re getting ready to create 3D/AR versions of the EQT Ventures team for future interactions! Sign up here to check out the Vectary platform. You can start a trial. It’s fun, even for absolute 3D-Design newbies. And if you’re interested in joining their journey — the team is currently hiring .