Durham, North Carolina & Innsbruck, Austria, November 28th, 2023 – Hololight, the leading specialist in AR and VR solutions for the enterprise market, today announced it has secured a further $12 million in funding to accelerate the development of its XR streaming platform, Hololight Hub. As the only proven enterprise streaming platform on the market for immersive applications including virtual and augmented reality (XR), Hololight has set the benchmark in XR streaming, having pioneered the technology since 2015.
Helping to enable global availability and easy deployment of XR applications, Hololight Hub has proven to empower enterprises as they use XR to improve their industrial processes in product development, manufacturing, training, or service. The new investment will help to grow and expand the XR streaming platform, helping companies to build future-proof XR infrastructures and promote new forms of collaboration and digital workflows in 3D. With the new investment, Hololight will accelerate the onboarding of customers across its key verticals automotive, aerospace, mechanical engineering and many more.
The funding has been led by European growth equity investor Flatz Hoffmann, with other key contributors including existing investors EnBW New Ventures, Bayern Kapital, and Future Energy Ventures. Following on from the company’s Series A investment in December 2021, the new $12m investment brings the company’s total investment funding to $27m.
The Need for Streaming in the Era of Spatial Computing and Industrial XR
XR streaming solves major challenges surrounding industrial applications and addresses the unique computing, data and security challenges of these environments. Hololight has spent years perfecting its proprietary streaming technology, which is now the backbone of its enterprise-grade streaming platform. By streaming entire AR or VR applications across local servers and the cloud, Hololight Hub revolutionizes the XR experience by amplifying quality, access, and security of immersive content while simplifying management and deployment.
Building on 800% Customer Growth to Over 150 Customers in Three Years
Hololight was founded in 2015 by CEO Florian Haspinger, CTO Alexander Werlberger, COO Susanne Haspinger, and CMO Luis Bollinger. The company currently serves more than 150 customers, including major accounts such as BMW, Nokia, and Engie, as well as a number of leading global aerospace and defense clients. Hololight is also a trusted partner to key industry players such as Amazon Web Services, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Verizon, amongst others.
According to Hololight CEO Florian Haspinger, the investment will also see further global expansion, helping to fast-track further US growth after the opening of the company’s new US office in 2022, in Durham’s Triangle technology hub:
“As the pioneers of enterprise XR streaming, it is our vision to stream any XR app on Hololight Hub to help enterprises break down the barriers to capitalizing on immersive technologies. XR streaming is helping these companies to achieve improved data security, infrastructure flexibility, high-fidelity XR experiences, and global availability across their XR initiatives – all in a highly cost effective way. The addition of Flatz Hoffmann as a visionary investor to the board underscores the expansion of our trajectory, and the steadfast support of our existing investors demonstrates their confidence in the progress they’ve seen at Hololight and the future of enterprise XR.”
Christopher Hoffmann, Partner at Flatz Hoffmann, emphasized: “Our strategy is to invest in emerging European champions with ambitions for technology leadership and resource efficiency. Hololight fits the bill perfectly, competing successfully in the global XR market and shaping the industry with Hololight Hub. We are also highly impressed by Hololight’s inclusive culture and strategic resilience in building a leader in spatial computing. Flatz Hoffmann looks forward to supporting the team as it scales from venture to growth.”
Marc Umber, Head of Investment Team at EnBW New Ventures, added: “We believe that this strong team and its groundbreaking technology have already begun to change the way we work in the future when it comes to industrial design, construction, engineering, services and quality assurance. The team has created something truly spectacular for industrial use cases. With the increasing penetration of next-generation mobile networks, XR streaming will also change the way we interact with our environment in our daily lives. Hololight has grown remarkably over the past few years, which is a testament to the trust and credibility they’ve built with their customers and partners, and we share that confidence without reservation.”
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