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Varjo raises USD 31 million for VR/XR innovation
Finnish company Varjo has received a considerable financial boost to its plans to transform heavy industry with the world’s first human-eye resolution VR/XR product.
The capital will be used to scale Varjo’s 80-strong hardware and software teams to more than 200 over the next 12 months, and to finance the global launch and go-to-market of its first product.
Varjo’s industrial-grade headset will allow professionals in complex and design-driven industries to work in human eye-resolution virtual or mixed reality when designing new products.
“We hope that the impact of our hardware and software platform on industry will be as profound as the introduction of the graphical user interface,” says company co-founder and CEO, Urho Konttori.
Varjo is already collaborating with Airbus, Audi, Lilium, Saab, Sellen, Volkswagen and Volvo Cars to optimise the headset for their respective business sectors and needs.
A virtual future
The 31 million-US dollar Series B funding round was led by Atomico, with Series A investors EQT Ventures and Lifeline Ventures also participating and being joined by new strategic investor Next47. Varjo raised an additional 8.2 million US dollars last year.
“Until we met Varjo’s visionary founders and experienced their superior product first-hand, we thought that VR was still at least 10 years away from being truly useful for professionals,” states Atomico founding partner and CEO, Niklas Zennström. “It’s because of Varjo’s world-class team that industries such as automotive, engineering, aerospace, architecture, construction, industrial design and real-world training simulations won’t have to wait that long to be able to utilise the technology for their business-critical use cases.”
The news represents the latest development for the Finnish company, as it continues its push to be at the forefront of technological transformation.
“If the first transformation was text-based computers, the second graphics interfaces, the third mobile, then the fourth is immersive technology,” CEO Konttori outlined in our feature article on the company last year. “We are at the point where we can help ignite this transformation and if we help to start it, we also want to lead it.”