Back in February, 2021, Matterport, announced it would be merging with a SPAC, a public entity, Gores Holdings VI (NASDAQ: GHVI), led by institutional investors including Tiger Global Management, LLC, Senator Investment Group, Dragoneer Investment Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Miller Value Partners, Darlington Partners, Untitled Investments and Lux Capital. The combined company will trade as MTTR and is expected to have a post-transaction enterprise value of approximately $2.3 billion when the merger is completed later this month. Matterport is a vertically integrated company that makes hardware and software for 3D location scans. While Google and Apple are mapping the exterior of the physical world, Matterport is scanning the interior.
A SPAC is a company created to raise money through an IPO. At the time of their IPOs, SPACs have no existing business operations or acquisition targets. They have two years to complete an acquisition or they must return their funds to investors. This increasingly popular method of raising money from public markets is suspect in some financial circles, as these business combinations are lightly regulated, which has led to high profile failures like Lordstown Motors. Others say the rise of SPACs is an example of the democratization of equity investing.
Matterport scan of an apartment.
Matterport houses the largest spatial data library in the world comprising more than 15 billion square feet of space and five million digital twins of all sizes from more than 150 countries - and growing at a pace of 230,000 a month. Using its hardware or platform agnostic apps, Matterport can scan anything. There are professionals who do spectacular scans using Matterport’s proprietary $3,000 camera, the Pro 2, or they can be done by anyone using a smartphone app. Photographs capture what a place looks like; scans can capture the space, the physical relationship of things. A scan or digital twin is machine readable, and searchable. The models are cross platform and can be navigated with a mouse, VR headset or mobile phone, or anything with a browser. “Today Matterport turns buildings into data,” said CEO RJ Pittman in an interview in June. “Tomorrow our data will increase the value of every building.”
RJ Pittman, senior vice president & chief product officer at eBay Marketplaces, speaks at the 2014 ... [+]
Matterport is becoming a standard. “Matterported,” a word. The company recently announced an agreement with Facebook to share its technology, which can be used to guide robots. They have also worked with Apple on its lidar scanner technology. Any space can be Matterported, including the interior and exterior of homes, vacation rentals, offices, museums, schools, factories, hospitals, retail stores, yachts, trucks and vehicles. Pittman says his ambition is for Matterport to eventually host a “3D capture of the built world.” They are ubiquitous in the rapidly expanding sliver of the space they occupy.
To be sure, companies like Sketchfab, Polycam, and Trnio are indirect competitors in this space, but they have a broader focus, and way less money. Niantic is doing scans of the “built world,” too. Its Lightship platform for creating AR apps is acquiring massive amounts of crowdsourced, geolocated spatial data from its Pokemon Go players. One big difference is Matterport’s relationship with location rights holders. Niantic does not. Matterport gets substantial recurring SasS revenue from its clients.
The Matterport SPAC merger will provide capital to accelerate the company’s international expansion and SaaS tech/hosting, and may even become a platform for competitors’ scans. Privacy is also an issue with a digital twin of a private interior space and again, here Matterport also has an edge, since its the owners and tenants of the spaces who are posting their data to Matterport’s platform.
Matterport is pursuing a multi-pronged business plan includes scanning, SaaS AI and hosting. The platform is powered by Cortex AI, the company's patented deep learning neural network. Cortex accurately creates 3D digital twins by handling complex tasks like 2D to 3D reconstruction, advanced image processing, automatic color correction, object recognition, room labeling, and more. The camera, scanning services, and hosting are Matterport’s key business, but it is pushing into digital twins of all kinds of commercial objects, keeping them accurate, and making them searchable.
Gores SPAC will provide up to $640 million in gross proceeds, comprising $345 M cash from Gores Holdings VI and $295 million in fully committed common stock purchase at $10.00 per share. When the transaction is completed, MTTR will join the growing ranks of pure-play spatial computing companies, which include booming companies like PTC, which just joined the S&P 500, and Autodesk. Adding fuel to the fire is the phenomenal growth of the real estate market.
Matterport recently announced its second quarter results. Total revenue was $26.9 million, up 108% year over year. Subscriber revenue of $13.8 million, up 84% year over year. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of $55.2 million. Spaces Under Management (SUM) grew to 4.9 million, up 88% from a year ago, surpassing 5 million in April. Subscribers increased to 331,000, up 531% year over year.
