US-Swiss software start-up holo|one closed a $8 Million Series A financing round led by Micron Ventures, the venture arm of one of the largest semiconductor companies. Additional investors in the round include Lenovo and Verve Ventures. holo|one will use the investment to fund further development of their XR solution Sphere, a metaverse productivity and collaboration platform for enterprise.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the increasing importance of remote collaboration while simultaneously confronting us with the limitations of contemporary solutions. The recent surge in interest over the Metaverse only heightened demand for sophisticated, production ready XR (Extended Reality) solutions. holo|one has been developing Sphere, an XR productivity and collaboration platform that blends digital content with the real world in the form of holograms, for several years. With Sphere, users can work together across borders while being represented as avatars, resulting in a lifelike collaboration experience.
After extensively testing the solution in a productive environment, the venture arm of Micron Technology decided to invest in holo|one and Sphere. Lenovo, after a multi-year close collaboration between their own XR team, called ThinkReality, and holo|one, followed suit. The vested strategic interest of parties that have closely worked with the company and product for years substantiates holo|one’s long-term aim of becoming a leading player in the emerging Metaverse industry. Additional investors include Verve Ventures, Family Office Schwarzwälder Bote managed by German Multiple VC fund Redstone and Forefront Venture Partners.
“Companies are racing each other to develop viable XR solutions while Sphere is on the market right now”, said Sven Brunner, CEO of holo|one. “We are months, if not years, ahead of the competition and have continuously proven to be able to win bids against the few companies that also boast a working product. With our winning combination of a sophisticated solution, solid customer base and key strategic partnerships, we are confident that we will capture a large part of the emerging enterprise metaverse market.”
“Just as the mobile operating system and user interface unlocked the power of the smartphone through an intuitive user experience, we believe that holo|one’s software will make adoption of XR hardware seamless both on the manufacturing floor and beyond, into the broader enterprise metaverse,” said Gayathri Radhakrishnan, senior director of venture capital at Micron. “Unlike many enterprise-software investment opportunities, in this instance we had the benefit of being able to evaluate several leading solutions in the leading-edge manufacturing operations, with results confirming that holo|one is ahead of the curve, offering a differentiated collaboration experience for customers that we see great potential for.”
The XR platform Sphere is a productivity and collaboration tool for enterprise. Sphere does not rely on heavy and expensive customization — it is an out-of-the-box solution designed for an easy integration of XR into business processes. Sphere covers all common XR use cases (remote assistance, digital collaboration and workflow guidance) and is compatible with a variety of different industries. holo|one was founded in 2016 in Lezburg (AG) and is today incorporated in Switzerland as well as in Santa Clara in the US state of California.
(Press release / SK)
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