German enterprise extended reality (XR) firm Hololight announced on Tuesday it had received new sources of funding to launch its Holo-Light Hub.
Designed as the company’s first-ever XR streaming solution, Hololight Hub will allow enterprise users to stream any XR applications across virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (VR/AR/MR) devices.
It will also accommodate smartphones, laptops, and tablets, among others.
To achieve this, the company earned an additional $12 million USD to develop Hololight Hub, allowing the company to raise the standards for XR solutions worldwide.
The is led by European growth equity firm Flatz Hoffmann with other key contributors including existing investors @EnBWNewVentures, Bayern Kapital, and @FutureEnergy_VC #XR
Read more in our full press release https://t.co/pMXc2hLhq4 pic.twitter.com/t3b6z5L7HZ— Hololight (@Holo_LightGmbH) November 28, 2023
Based in Innsbruck, Austria and Durham, North Carolina, Hololight was founded and began developing the technologies in 2015.
In a bid to expand accessibility to end users globally, the company created its XR streaming platform to “future-proof XR infrastructures and promote new forms of collaboration and digital workflows in 3D,” it wrote.
Further benefits include supporting enterprise verticals like aerospace, automotive, architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC), and others with accelerated onboarding processes.
European growth equity company Flatz Hoffmann led the funding round. Additional contributors like EnBW New Ventures, Bayern Kapital, Future Energy Ventures, and others contributed vital funds to the initiative.
The news follows Hololight’s Series A investor round in December 2021, bringing the firm’s total investments to around $27 million USD.
Spatial Computing and Industrial XR Streaming
As XR adoption rapidly increases across immersive enterprise sectors, companies are challenged with tackling computing, security, and data concerns.
For Hololight, the company has worked tirelessly on creating the streaming technologies supporting its platform. With this achievement, users can stream whole VR and AR applications across the cloud and local servers with lossless, real-time functionality.
Hololight Hub continues to improve on quality, accessibility, and security for the platform, leading to nearly 800 percent growth for customer clients over the last three years, or 150 major customers.
It has also secured massive partnerships with key industrial heavyweights such as Amazon Web Services, NVIDIA, Verizon, Qualcomm, and many more.
Comments on Hololight Funding
Florian Haspinger, Chief Executive, Hololight, said that the funding will allow his firm to expand globally. Doing so would help fast-track growth across the United States after opening a new US office at North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park location in Durham.
He continued,
“As the pioneers of enterprise XR streaming, it is our vision to stream any XR app on Hololight Hub to help enterprises break down the barriers to capitalizing on immersive technologies. XR streaming is helping these companies to achieve improved data security, infrastructure flexibility, high-fidelity XR experiences, and global availability across their XR initiatives – all in a highly cost effective way”
Concluding, he stated that the addition of Flatz Hoffmann to the investors’ team “underscores the expansion of our trajectory.”
He added: “The steadfast support of our existing investors demonstrates their confidence in the progress they’ve seen at Hololight and the future of enterprise XR.”
Additionally, Christopher Hoffmann, Partner, Flatz Hoffmann, explained,
“Our strategy is to identify emerging European champions with ambitions for technology leadership and resource efficiency. Hololight is a perfect fit, competing successfully in the global XR market and shaping the industry with Hololight Hub”
He continued that his company was “highly impressed” by the XR firm’s “inclusive management culture and strategic resilience in building a leader in spatial computing.”
Hoffmann concluded his firm “looks forward to supporting the team as it scales from venture to growth.”
Finally, Marc Umber, Head of Investment Team, EnBW New Ventures, stated his company believed that the “stream team and its groundbreaking technology” had “already begun to change” the way people worked in the future related to industrial design, engineering, services, construction, and quality assurance.
He explained further,
“The team has created something truly spectacular for industrial use cases. With the increasing penetration of next-generation mobile networks, XR streaming will also change the way we interact with our environment in our daily lives. Hololight has grown remarkably over the past few years, which is a testament to the trust and credibility they’ve built with their customers and partners, and we share that confidence without reservation.”
Hololight, Nokia Bell Labs Debut Next-Gen L4S Solution
The news comes after the company participated in a major showcase at the Brooklyn 6G Summit in New York City, New York. At the premier connectivity event, the company partnered with Nokia Bell Labs to demo next-generational virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (VR/AR/MR) experiences.
With the proof of concept (PoC) showcase, Hololight’s low latency, low loss scalable (L4S) solution revealed the capabilities such networking connectivity tools could offer enterprises. People demoing the Hololight Hub platform could collaborate at the same time in immersive spaces.
