This early stage company is breathing new life into the AR/VR space…

An interesting product launch in the augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) space by early stage private company Campfire really caught my attention.  This is a fairly new company that just raised an impressive $8 million in seed funding. Here’s what the product looks like. It’s pretty cool:

This certainly isn’t the big bulky headset that we are used to in this space. It’s a sleek, lightweight design. And the headset is intended specifically for collaborative functions in an office setting. I love the clarity of the project.  

To start with, the headset can switch between AR and VR modes. In VR mode, the lenses become opaque, darkening out the real world. The headset projects the immersive, 3D graphics one would expect.  And in AR mode, the lens technology becomes transparent so that the user can also see their surroundings.What’s more, the headset works in tandem with an entire system. Check this out:

Here, we can see the headset alongside two other devices. The black, X-shaped device is a holographic projector. It works in concert with the headset to position three-dimensional images in a field of view above the device.  And the device in the foreground is a control pad that connects to a smartphone. 

This allows the user to manipulate the 3D hologram at will.  This is a pragmatic system that’s perfect for industrial design, product development, and holographic art and graphic creations. And multiple people can work on the same hologram together. That’s where the collaborative element comes into play.   So this is a comprehensive vision for AR/VR from an exciting new company that only just completed its seed round last month.

We might ask… How is the company this far along if it’s just getting started? Longtime Exponential Tech Investor subscribers may remember an early stage company called Meta. I profiled that company in one of my very early issues of Exponential Tech Investor.  Meta raised $75 million in venture capital and developed some great augmented reality technology. 

But it was too early. The company ran out of money in 2018 and couldn’t attract any new investors. Meta’s intellectual property assets were sold to a bank as part of the bankruptcy process.  Well, Campfire now has access to those assets. It is simply building on all the great work Meta did. It essentially got a head start. 

Now Campfire is able to leverage both the existing technology from Meta and take advantage of the bleeding-edge lens and semiconductor technology that exists today. I’m excited to see what Campfire does with its promising product. This could be the AR/VR platform that cracks the market for product design and creation.