AR hype is high, especially with Facebook opening up its Camera Effects Platform so developers can play with the in-app camera and basic AR effects.
With several big announcements coming from tech giants lately, augmented reality (AR) has been heating up. Apple hired a former NASA employee to work on its AR initiatives. Netflix, which has been skeptical on the future of VR beyond gaming, is building an app for the Microsoft Hololens AR device. Snap released a new AR feature called World Lenses, and the same day at its developer conference F8, Facebook announced it would release a competing product inside Facebook Stories. AR hype is high, especially with Facebook opening up its Camera Effects Platform so developers can play with the in-app camera and basic AR effects.
With AR top of mind recently, we decided to revisit the AR/VR collection to find startups with high Mosaic scores (of 800 or more) specifically within AR.
- The hologram video company 8i has been high momentum lately and increased jobs listings after raising a $27M Series B last November. The company’s technology could definitely appeal to a Facebook or Snap with its consumer hologram tech.
- Upskill, the AR glasses which was featured in the Industrial section of our AR/VR market map, recently closed an extension to its Series B that included the newly-formed Boeing venture arm HorizonX, along with previous investors GE Ventures, NEA, and SineWave Ventures.
- While not technically speaking true AR (the app is more like a scanner), the wine comparison app Vivino allows for a very useful batch search of a whole restaurant wine list. The app highlights what could be possible down the road with comparative shopping in real-time AR and happens to be a hit on the Research team.
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