Matterport helps real estate firms go virtual

Matterport real estate tour. (Image courtesy Matterport.)
Matterport real estate tour. (Image courtesy Matterport.)

Thousands of real estate agents already using the technology to create virtual property tours seen by over a million people a month

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – Matterport, a leader in computer vision technology and immersive media, announced that it has raised a $30M Series C financing led by Qualcomm Incorporated, through its venture investment group, Qualcomm Ventures. GIC joined as a new investor and existing major investors participated in the round as well.

Since 2014, Matterport has raised a total of $56M from investors that include Lux Capital, DCM Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Greylock Partners, Navitas Capital, AMD Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, iGlobe Partners, Rothenberg Ventures, Luminari Capital, Sling Media founder Blake Krikorian, and Crate & Barrel founder Gordon Segal.

Matterport enables anyone to digitally reconstruct real-world spaces for use in virtual reality, augmented reality, web, and mobile applications. Currently, these Matterport Spaces can be explored on highly immersive virtual reality platforms, like Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, and Google Cardboard, as well as through its browser-based app, called 3D Showcase, which allows all of Matterport’s immersive content to be viewed today on PC and mobile devices.

With the new growth funding, Matterport intends to accelerate development of mobile capture for virtual reality and augmented reality content, starting the era of user-generated immersive content. Matterport also intends to expand its developer platform for web and mobile apps. Matterport’s application framework makes it easy for anyone to incorporate professional- and consumer-created immersive media into their web or mobile applications for virtual reality and augmented reality experiences.

Matterport will also continue to scale its operations to support strong demand for its growing professional business. Last year Matterport launched its Pro Camera, 3D Showcase, and its cloud-based service plans — all targeted at the real estate industry. Other sectors that rely on place promotion have also rapidly adopted the technology, including apartment rentals, hotels and resorts, and cultural heritage sites. Matterport sees spectacular use cases in additional industries, including travel, construction, architecture, insurance, retail planning, advertising, entertainment media, and journalism. Less than a year since launching, views of Matterport Spaces now exceed one million per month.

“Matterport’s mission is to give people the freedom to experience any place, at any time,” said Bill Brown, Matterport CEO. “Three keys to realizing that mission are the ability to have real-world immersive content viewed on the growing number of virtual reality headsets, consumer capture using mobile devices, and a vibrant ecosystem of third-party application developers. We envision a world where an immersive photo-realistic version of every space — be it a home, apartment, office, business, retail store, museum, hotel, venue or other place of interest — is available to consumers, on demand.”

“Matterport is an advanced, end-to-end 3D imaging platform with customer momentum in both established industries such as real-estate and emerging industries such as virtual reality. As 3D sensors become mainstream in smartphones, we believe the bigger opportunity for Matterport lies in mobile,” said Patrick Eggen, Senior Director, Qualcomm Ventures.

Since early 2014, Matterport has been a partner on Google’s Project Tango and separately with Intel on RealSense, and has collaborated with several mobile technology providers and OEMs. Future generations of mobile devices from these projects are expected to include 3D sensors that enable a real space to be automatically reconstructed into an immersive digital space in real-time using Matterport software.

Recently, Matterport has been ramping up its virtual reality content publishing efforts as new devices have become available to purchase. As an early participant in the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR development programs, Matterport was one of the first to create an app for the Gear VR app store. To open up these capabilities to an ecosystem of developers, today Matterport officially began welcoming partners for its Matterport Developer Program.

About Matterport

Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Matterport develops technology to create, modify, navigate and share immersive spaces in virtual reality, web, and mobile apps. Matterport’s 3D Showcase, released last year, has provided an unprecedented ability for anyone to easily move through virtual spaces created quickly and inexpensively from real-world properties. To learn more please visit www.matterport.com.