Imverse Holograms draw attention and projects from tech giants

Boosted by the increasing demand in telepresence applications due to the sanitary context, Imverse is gathering momentum. The EPFL spinoff based at Fongit, has developed a proprietary voxel (volumetric pixel)-rendering engine which enables a unique Live capture, rendering and display of multiple (human) 3D Holograms in real time, the only company globally capable of doing so. 

“For all the devastation and havoc that Covid has unleashed upon the world, it has brought home the need for a radical rethink of our values and attitudes. In our case, the pandemic has inadvertently catalyzed the scope and applications of our technology across multiple Telepresence verticals with use cases ranging from Remote Work, Training and Collaboration, Online Education and Learning to Tele-medicine, Art and Entertainment.” explains Ivo Petrov, Executive Chairman and member of the board at Imverse. 

This has led the startup to shift its strategy from developing niche VR projects and services in-house to framing partnerships and collaborations with global technology leaders in a bid to accelerate the use case exploration, productization, business development and distribution of applications and services and create a "new standard" based on its technology and live hologram capabilities.  Said differently, Imverse current focus is on positioning its voxel-rendering engine as an underlying "operating system” for other companies to use and build products, services and applications on top, based on licensing and revenue sharing business models.

Thriving through strategic collaborations 

As Ivo Petrov explains, joining the Microsoft Startup Program is a tremendous opportunity to partner and collaborate with Microsoft. The startup pays tribute to Andrew Reid, the MS Startup Program Lead, who has been instrumental in embracing and mentoring the relationship. Thanks to his leadership, Imverse has had engaging discussions with the Microsoft Mixed Reality Studios in San Francisco around content creation interfaces and the MS research labs in Zurich and Cambridge, UK, around core technology deliverables. Today the team led by Javier Bello Ruiz looks forward to engaging further with the Teams engineering team and other Microsoft business units.

Demanding project with Logitech

To expand further on the collaboration front, Imverse has just completed a very demanding project with Logitech focusing on Live Telepresence applications and integration with Unity. Jean-Michel Chardon and Remy Zimmermann, Logitech’s Technology Innovation Leads and their team, have lent their vast expertise, experience and enviable entrepreneurship drive to the project and Imverse looks forward to building on from here to even bigger and better things. The Geneva startup hopes to announce other exciting partnerships and collaborations in the weeks and months to come.

Today Imverse employs only six people. The startup plans a capital raise from its existing as well as some new investors in the next few months with the distinct objective of using the proceeds to expand its engineering bench and bandwidth and extend its expertise in post-processing and machine learning, adds Ivo Petrov.

(ES)