Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP), invested $13.5 million in Replay Technologies, an Israeli virtual reality start-up. This raise will form half of Replay Technologies’ total raised amount of $27 million to date. With these huge investments, Replay hopes to continue their development of next-generation, multi-dimensional virtual reality tech. Having only been founded in 2011, such a large investment will send ripples throughout the virtual reality industry, and demonstrates the immense progress made in the last 5 years.
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The company has already introduced freeD, allowing viewers to ‘jump’ into real-life events and experience them from a variety of different angles through virtual reality, which already got sports fans excited. In order to carry this out, a series of complex data algorithms are used to reconstruct the event on 3D pixels in real-time. Cool, and certainly complicated.
Despite the impressive nature of freeD combined with this recent windfall, Replay will be facing a host of tough virtual reality competition. Perhaps most notably, NextVR will be looking to build upon their recent successes and, with 23 virtual reality patents currently pending, will undoubtedly be a tough opponent in the industry.
RT, though, also has an impressive track-record. They recently teamed with the Dallas Mavericks, and even more recently partnered with Intel to further their freeD tech. Having a company with the power of Intel in Replay’s corner can only help.
Experience this play from #NBAAllStarTO in amazing 360-degree perspective w/ freeD technology powered by Intel pic.twitter.com/ze1e98xITv
— Intel (@intel) February 17, 2016
#NBAAllStarTO has been highlighted by high-flying athleticism; experience the action with freed by @Intel https://t.co/mfuKp6JAoG
— NBA (@NBA) February 15, 2016
Replay Technologies cofounder and CEO Oren Yogev said, “This investment will allow us to move faster than ever to turn our vision for the future of video into reality. DTCP’s conviction has paved the way for a significant round which will allow us to focus on taking the technology to the next step – mass consumer adoption. The combination of VR gear and our unique content will allow viewers to completely immerse themselves into a sports broadcast alongside – and often in a more immersive way – than those on the ground.”