Google Ventures Startup Investment Allows Group AR Experiences
An article on Business Insider discusses Google Ventures’ $14.5 million round of funding for Blue Vision Labs, a UK technology startup to enable their development of Augmented Reality applications that multiple people can use at the same time.
The Blue Vision Labs started in 2011, but has now begun to detail its product, which works on the premise of ‘shared AR’. Rather than creating its own shared AR apps, they are working with developers to enable access to it.
So far, the company has raised $17 million in funding, from organisations such as Accel, Horizons Ventures, and SV Angel. Tom Hulme, leader of Google Ventures’ investment, discovered Blue Vision Labs via people working in London’s tech sector in addition to academic contacts. He particularly felt that navigation apps showed off Blue Vision’s technology; he is quoted to have said that the company found a way to reciprocally locate devices with an unspecified GPS position, which has the potential to be scaled up to allow games involving many people to be managed.
Hulme is also quoted to have said that AR is an area which Google Ventures are looking into for future investments, as mobile devices are now capable of delivering AR in a way that they can’t with Virtual Reality.