Virtual reality
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No Man’s Sky’s next update will let you explore infinite space in virtual reality
No Man’s Sky just figured out a way to make a wildly absorbing space exploration game even more immersive.
Announced during Sony’s first PlayStation State of Play update, No Man’s Sky devotees will soon be able to explore an endless procedurally generated universe in virtual reality. Hello Games’ Sean Murray followed Sony’s news with a bit more color on Twitter.
The VR update is part of No Man’s Sky Beyond, the development team’s latest extremely generous bundle of new content, doled out to existing players for free. No Man’s Sky’s virtual reality makeover will launch on PlayStation VR and Steam VR this summer.
The VR update will bring enhance the first-person perspective of the existing game, allowing players to steer a starship using their thruster, reach into a bag to fetch their multitool and wave to fellow players meandering around the vastness of space.
No Man’s Sky Virtual Reality is not a separate mode. Anything that is possible in NEXT or any other update is ready and waiting in VR. pic.twitter.com/zSMSCaz4es
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) March 25, 2019
While we don’t know all of the details yet, that experience will dovetail nicely with the forthcoming feature cluster known as No Man’s Sky Online, “a radical new social and multiplayer experience” for the at times isolated space sim.
“No Man’s Sky Virtual Reality is not a separate mode, but the entire game brought to life in virtual reality,” Murray wrote in a blog post. According to Murray the update will offer “a true VR experience rather than a port.”
You can get a glimpse of how this will look in a teaser video, though since much of it depicts normal gameplay, there’s plenty of surprise still in store. Assuming the game runs well enough, No Man’s Sky Virtual Reality will be a far cry from gimmicky VR games that lack true depth, offering one of the most expansive — if not the most expansive — VR experiences to date.
No Man’s Sky fans should still keep an eye out — there’s one more mystery announcement left for the Beyond update, which is shaping up to make the No Man’s Sky world more epic than anyone who played the game at launch could ever have hoped for.
“By bringing full VR support, for free, to the millions of players already playing the game, No Man’s Sky will become perhaps the most-owned VR title when released,” Murray wrote.
“We are excited for that moment when millions of players will suddenly update and be able to set foot on their home planets and explore the intricate bases they have built in virtual reality for the first time.”
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Nintendo’s Labo: VR Kit is not Virtual Boy 2.0
Even the most successful tech company is going to have a stumble from time to time. Nintendo’s 45 years in the video game industry is spotted with a few doozies, but none are more infamous than the Virtual Boy. The 1994 portable console was marketed as an early home entry into virtual reality, but in actual reality ended up being little more than a blood-red headache.
Nintendo knew the comparisons to the doomed console would come fast and furiously when it launched its next VR venture, so the company took the time to get it just right. In a sense, Labo VR is a cautious push into the virtual realm. It’s nowhere near the all-in approach of Oculus, Vive or even PlayStation VR, for that matter — but it’s uniquely Nintendo.
Like the first Labo kits, it’s a friendly reminder that Nintendo’s chief job is to surprise and delight, and it happily delivers on both fronts. But just as the Labo piano shouldn’t be mistaken for a real musical instrument, Labo VR ought not be viewed as a real virtual reality.
It’s not just the pop-out cardboard form factor, either. Google made that a perfectly acceptable beginner’s approach to VR. It’s more that Nintendo has taken a very casual approach to all of this. The kit’s virtual reality experience is an extension of Labo itself. It’s no more important than the process of building the headset and various accessories step by step on the app. Or, for that matter, sharing all of the above experiences with others.
During a demo of the new kits in New York this week, Nintendo was quick to point out that the headsets are built without a strap. It claims this was a conscious decision so that the experience can be passed around and shared. I’m sure there are some practical reasons behind this decision as well, but it’s certainly a nice thought.
Virtual reality is, by nature of its form factor, a solitary experience. Labo VR doesn’t have any sort of video-out feature to share the experience on a big screen (for now, at least), so the idea of offering it up in a more social play-and-pass scenario is appealing. This goes double for the fact that, like the original Labo kits, all of the games included fall under the casual banner. The experiences share a common lineage with Nintendo analog titles like Mario Party or Mario Paint.
Your mileage with each title will vary. Certainly some (Bird and Blaster spring to mind) will stay with you longer than others and demand more repeat play. On the whole, each buildable peripheral launches with one (maybe two) compatible games. The good news, however, is that, like Labo, the company packs a lot of controllers (and therefore experiences) into a single kit.
The standard Labo: VR Kit ships with six Toy-Con projects (VR Goggles, Toy-Con Blaster, Toy-Con Camera, Toy-Con Bird, Toy-Con Wind Pedal and Toy-Con Elephant), while the cheaper Starter Set comes with two (Goggles and Blaster). If you go for the latter to dip your toes in the water or just to save on cash, there are a pair of “expansion sets” to get the full experience.
Unlike the last time Nintendo came to town with a Labo press tour, we didn’t actually get any time to build. That said, if previous kits are any indication, that’s half of the fun and value proposition here. Also, the amount of time you’ll spend building varies greatly from project to project — take it from me, someone who spent most of a work morning building that damn piano.
Once built, the VR experience is about on-par with what you’d expect from a Google VR. Again, it’s a set of lenses attached to a hunk of cardboard. This is no Rift or Vive and the immersiveness of your own experience will vary. The graphics are cartoony and oftentimes just large polygons. But a well-crafted casual gaming experience can be enough to pull you out of your own head for a bit. Bird is the best example of this.
The controller clips on the headset, with a Toy-Con popping out the other end like a beak. As a player, you hook your hands on either side of the display and flap along as you play a bird, flying around trees and completing different missions to feed an army of hatchlings. It’s a relaxing reprieve from some of the faster-paced games, as you glide around the skies. Add in the foot-controlled Wind Pedal, and the system delivers a puff of air to your face as you boost your bird, adding to the effect.
Blaster, a big, fun novelty gun, is the most engaging of the bunch. When I ended my demos with some extra time to spare, the Nintendo rep asked me if I wanted to give any of the games another go. The answer was simple. A simple first-person shooter, Blaster pits you against an army of alien blobs. You load the gun by cocking it like a shot-gun, and pull the trigger to an explosive effect.
Honorable mention goes to Doodle, which uses the bizarre elephant-shaped controller. The experience is unique from the rest in that it’s not actually a game, but rather a 3D drawing tool. It’s one of the more clever additions to the pack, though actually drawing on a 3D plane with a cardboard controller shaped like an elephant’s trunk is easier said than done. The implementation is a bit lacking, but it offers interesting insight into where Labo VR might go in the future.
Honestly, I just scratched the surface during my briefing. But there’s little question that Labo VR is a fun and singular experience. There’s also a special screen holder, so users who have rough time with VR can experience a 2D version of the games and accessories. Also, as with the standard Labo kit, Nintendo has bundled in Toy-Con Garage, so users can start building their own games when they tire of the pre-packaged experiences.
If there’s one disappointment in all of this, it’s that it will likely be a while before we see a full standalone VR experience from Nintendo. The idea of playing as Mario, Link and the like in virtual reality is no doubt something of a lifelong dream for plenty of gamers who grew up on the characters. But while Virtual Boy is a quarter-century in the past, the memory still lingers.
Until then, Labo VR is a fully engaging take on VR, and a uniquely Nintendo one, to boot.
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Media fragmentation is annoying consumers
Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications division published its 13th-annual Digital Media Trends survey, focused on identifying changes in the ways US consumers engage with various types of media.
Led by an independent research firm, the survey had roughly 2,000 consumer respondents across demographics – with the report categorizing respondents based on age (Gen-Z: ages 14-21, Millenials: 22-35, Gen-X: 36-52, Boomers: 53-71, and Matures: 72+).
While already accompanied by a succinct 13-page executive summary, the report can largely be summarized in just a couple of sentences: more people are using streaming or alternative media services than ever before, largely due to more user freedom and customization, though the growing quantity and fragmentation of platforms are becoming more frustrating for users to manage.
The survey results directionally echo already well-discussed dynamics, which we’ve previously dug into such as here, here and here. Instead, the most poignant aspects of the report were not the answers or conclusions themselves, but the immense level of support many of them received.
Somewhat interesting:
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Matterport raises $48M to ramp up its 3D imaging platform
The growth of augmented and virtual reality applications and hardware is ushering in a new age of digital media and imaging technologies, and startups that are putting themselves at the center of that are attracting interest.
TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Matterport — which started out making cameras but has since diversified into a wider platform to capture, create, search and utilise 3D imagery of interior and enclosed spaces in immersive real estate, design, insurance and other B2C and B2B applications — has raised $48 million. Sources tell us the money came at a pre-money valuation of around $325 million, although the company is not commenting on that.
From what we understand, the funding is coming ahead of a larger growth round from existing and new investors, to tap into what they see as a big opportunity for building and providing (as a service) highly accurate 3D images of enclosed spaces.
The company in December appointed a new CEO, RJ Pittman — who had been the chief product officer at eBay, and before that held executive roles at Apple and Google — to help fill out that bigger strategy.
Matterport had raised just under $63 million prior to this and had been valued at around $207 million, according to PitchBook estimates.This current round is coming from existing backers, which include Lux Capital, DCM, Qualcomm Ventures and more.
Matterport’s roots are in high-end cameras built to capture multiple images to create 3D interior imagery for a variety of applications, from interior design and real estate to gaming. Changing tides in the worlds of industry and hardware have somewhat shifted its course.
On the hardware side, we’ve seen a rise in the functionality of smartphone cameras, as well as a proliferation of specialised 3D cameras at lower price points. So while Matterport still sells its own high-end cameras, it is also starting to work with less expensive devices with spherical lenses — such as the Ricoh Theta, which is nearly 10 times less expensive than Matterport’s Pro2 camera — and smartphones.
Using an AI engine — which it has been building for some time — packaged into a service it calls Matterport Cloud 3.0, it converts 2D panoramic and 360-degree images into 3D images. (Matterport Cloud 3.0 is currently in beta and will be launching fully on the 18th of March, initially supporting the Ricoh Theta V, the Theta Z1, the Insta360 ONE X and the Leica Geosystems BLK360 laser scanner.)
Matterport is further using this technology to grow its wider database of images. It already has racked up 1.6 million 3D images and millions of 2D images, and at its current growth rate, the aim is to expand its library to 100 million in the coming years, positioning it as a Getty for 3D enclosed images.
These, in turn, will be used in two ways: to feed Matterport’s machine learning to train it to create better and faster 3D images; and to become part of a wider library, accessible to other businesses by way of a set of APIs.
And, from what I understand, the object will not just be to use images as they are: people would be able to manipulate the images to, for example, remove all the furniture in a room and re-stage it completely without needing to physically do that work ahead of listing a house for sale. Another is adding immersive interior shots into mapping applications like Google’s Street View.
“We are a data company,” Pittman told me when I met him for coffee last month.
The ability to convert 2D into 3D images using artificial intelligence to help automate the process is a potentially big area that Matterport, and its investors, believe will be in increasing demand. That’s not just because people still think there will one day be a bigger market for virtual reality headsets, which will need more interesting content, but because we as consumers already have come to expect more realistic and immersive experiences today, even when viewing things on regular screens — and because B2B and enterprise services (for example design or insurance applications) have also grown in sophistication and now require these kinds of images.
(That demand is driving the creation of other kinds of 3D imaging startups, too. Threedy.ai launched last week with a seed round from a number of angels and VCs to perform a similar kind of 2D-to-3D mapping technique for objects rather than interior spaces. It is already working with a number of e-commerce sites to bypass some of the costs and inefficiencies of more established, manual methods of 3D rendering.)
While Matterport is doubling down on its cloud services strategy, it also has been making some hires to take the business to its next steps. In addition to Pittman, they have added Dave Lippman, formerly design head at eBay, as its chief design officer; and engineering veteran Lou Marzano as its VP of hardware, R&D and manufacturing, with more hires to come.
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Steam fights for future of game stores and streaming
For more than 15 years, Steam has been the dominant digital distribution platform for PC video games. While its success has spawned several competitors, including some online stores from game publishers, none have made a significant dent in its vice-like grip on the market.
Cracks, though, are seemingly starting to appear in Steam’s armor, and at least one notable challenger has stepped up, with potentially bigger ones on the horizon. They threaten to make Steam the digital equivalent of GameStop — a once unassailable retail giant whose future became questionable when it didn’t successfully change with the times.
The epic launch of an Epic Store
Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Ubisoft
Epic Games has, in a remarkably short period of time, positioned itself as the successor to Steam. In December, the creator of the billion-dollar Fortnite franchise announced it was getting into the game retail business with the Epic Games store. Less than two months later, it had landed limited exclusivity deals with two publishers that chose to bypass Steam as they launch upcoming titles.
First up was Ubisoft, which announced the PC version of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, a highly anticipated action game, would be semi-exclusive to the Epic Games store (it will also be available on Ubisoft’s digital storefront). Ubisoft also said that “additional select titles” would be coming to Epic’s store in later months.
“We’re giving game developers and publishers the store business model that we’ve always wanted as developers ourselves,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games. “Ubisoft supports our model and trusts us to deliver a smooth journey for players, from pre-purchase to the game’s release.”
Three weeks later, publisher Deep Silver abruptly discontinued pre-sales of its survival shooter Metro Exodus on Steam and announced the game would be available moving forward solely through the Epic Games store (previous Steam orders will be honored).
Steam’s past success is hitting new blocks
To be clear, Steam is hardly struggling. Last October at Melbourne Games Week, Steam announced it had 90 million monthly active users, compared to 67 million in 2017. Daily active users, it said, had grown from 33 million to 47 million.
Much of that growth came from China, where players are looking to circumvent the government’s crackdown on games. Domestic numbers, though, have been trending down, according to SteamSpy, a third-party tracking service.
Valve Software, which owns Steam, did not reply to requests for comment on this story. It did, however, post a statement on the Metro Exodus Steam page soon after Deep Silver announced its partnership with Epic, saying, “We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know.”
So what’s the draw for game makers to sell via the Epic Games store? It is, of course, a combination of factors, but chief among those is financial. To convince publishers and developers to utilize their system, Epic only takes a 12 percent cut of game-sale revenues. That’s significantly lower than the 30 percent taken by Valve on Steam (or the amounts taken by Apple or Google in their app stores).
To woo developers who use its Unreal graphics engine, Epic also waives all royalty fees for sales generated through the store. (Developers who use Unreal in their games typically pay a 5 percent royalty on all sales.)
The reason for those notably lower commissions, perhaps not surprisingly, ties back to Fortnite.
“While running Fortnite we learned a lot about the cost of running a digital store on PC,” says Sweeney. “The math is simple: we pay around 2.5 percent for payment processing for major payment methods, less than 1.5 percent for CDN [content delivery network] costs (assuming all games are updated as often as Fortnite), and between 1 percent and 2 percent for variable operating and customer support costs. Because we operate Fortnite on the Epic Games launcher on such a large scale, it has enabled us to build the store, run it at a low cost and pass those savings onto developers.”
Owning the game customer
Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Higher commissions are just one of the issues developers and publishers have with Steam. While none were willing to go on the record, for fear of retribution from Valve or because they were not authorized to officially speak on their company’s behalf, the complaints generally echoed each other.
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Qualcomm wants your phone to drive your next VR and AR headsets
Qualcomm wants to create a new device category, XR viewer headsets, that combine the compute power of its current Snapdragon 855 platform with the speed of 5G on a smartphone to provide you with mobile VR and AR experiences — or ‘Extended Reality,’ as Qualcomm likes to call it — with six degrees of freedom tracking. The company announced this new initiative at MWC in Barcelona and noted that it expects OEMs like Pico to launch devices later this year.
The idea here is that the headsets will be tethered to a smartphone via a USB-C connection that drives high-res displays, with a lot of the content being streamed over — ideally – a 5G connection.
The headsets are an extension of the company’s previous XR work which mostly focused on using a phone’s camera’s and displays to power AR experiences. The company did start an accelerator program for head mounted displays (HMD), the aptly named HMD accelerator program, back in 2017. In many ways, today’s announcement is an extension of this work.
“Our HMD Accelerator Program has been a critical catalyst for ecosystem partners ranging from component suppliers and ODMs, to bring quality standalone XR headsets to consumers,” said Hugo Swart, senior director, Product Management, Qualcomm. “Building upon the momentum of this program, we will extend this to XR viewers and compatible smartphones, starting with smartphones enabled by the Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform.”
Qualcomm has signed up a number of platform and software partners like Arvizio, NetEase-AR, Iconic Engine, NextVR, SenseTime and Wikitude, as well as manufacturers like Acer and Asus.
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Epic Games buys 3Lateral, maker of super-realistic ‘digital humans’
Epic Games announced this morning that they’ve acquired Serbia-based 3Lateral, a game studio focused on designing more realistic computer-generated human characters.
The team of 60+ will be continuing their work with existing partners and maintaining their presence in Serbia. 3Lateral founder Vladimir Mastilovic will lead Epic Games’ worldwide digital humans efforts, the company says.
No details on a price or specific deal terms were given.
The non-digital human team behind 3Lateral
Epic Games, which operates Fortnite as well as the Unreal Engine game development platform, has worked with 3Lateral in the past on projects to push the level of realism and detail that are possible with human avatars. Epic has open-sourced this work for developers; the acquisition will likely further expand the capabilities of Unreal Engine users to promote more detailed character design.
“Real-time 3D experiences are reshaping the entire entertainment industry, and digital human technology is at the forefront. Fortnite shows that 200,000,000 people can experience a 3D world together. Reaching the next level requires capturing, personalizing, and conveying individual human faces and emotions,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said in a statement.
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Daily Crunch: The age of quantum computing is here
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here:
1. IBM unveils its first commercial quantum computer
The 20-qubit system combines the quantum and classical computing parts it takes to use a machine like this for research and business applications into a single package. While it’s worth stressing that the 20-qubit machine is nowhere near powerful enough for most commercial applications, IBM sees this as the first step towards tackling problems that are too complex for classical systems.
2. Apple’s trillion-dollar market cap was always a false idol
Nothing grows forever, not even Apple. Back in August we splashed headlines across the globe glorifying Apple’s brief stint as the world’s first $1 trillion company, but in the end it didn’t matter. Fast-forward four months and Apple has lost more than a third of its stock value, and last week the company lost $75 billion in market cap in a single day.
3. GitHub Free users now get unlimited private repositories
Starting today, free GitHub users will now get unlimited private projects with up to three collaborators. Previously, GitHub had a caveat for its free users that code had to be public if they didn’t pay for the service.
Photo credit: Chesnot/Getty Images
4. Uber’s IPO may not be as eye-popping as we expected
Uber’s public debut later this year is undoubtedly the most anticipated IPO of 2019, but the company’s lofty valuation (valued by some as high as $120 billion) has some investors feeling uneasy.
5. Amazon is getting more serious about Alexa in the car with Telenav deal
Amazon has announced a new partnership with Telenav, a Santa Clara-based provider of connected car services. The collaboration will play a huge role in expanding Amazon’s ability to give drivers relevant information and furthers the company’s mission to bake Alexa into every aspect of your life.
6. I used VR in a car going 90 mph and didn’t get sick
The future of in-vehicle entertainment could be VR. Audi announced at CES that it’s rolling out a new company called Holoride to bring adaptive VR entertainment to cars. The secret sauce here is matching VR content to the slight movements of the vehicle to help those who often get motion sickness.
7. Verizon and T-Mobile call out AT&T over fake 5G labels
Nothing like some CES drama to start your day. AT&T recently shared a shady marketing campaign that labeled its 4G networks as 5G and rivals Verizon and T-Mobile are having none of it.
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The 10 largest US venture rounds of 2018
Three U.S. companies raised more than $1 billion in just one funding round in 2018, a year in which total deal value for U.S. startups is expected to surpass $100 billion for the first time.
For the most part, it was the usual suspects, and yes, SoftBank was an accessory in many of these rounds. Here’s a look at the 10 largest venture rounds of 2018.
Epic Games: $1.25 billion
The video game Fortnite Battle Royale was the star of the year 2018; more than 200 million players worldwide are registered online. (Photo Illustration by Chesnot/Getty Images)
Given the absolute phenomenon Fortnite became in just one year from its original release, it was no surprise private investors wanted to put money into Epic Games, the company behind it. In October, Epic Games announced a whopping $1.25 billion round at $15 billion valuation from KKR, Iconiq Capital, Smash Ventures, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Lightspeed Venture Partners to continue growing its Fortnite empire. That game alone is expected to bring in $2 billion in revenue in 2018 and reports 200 million registered players — not too shabby.
Cary, N.C.-based Epic Games’ monstrous fundraise was a standout in a year when funding for gaming and esports startups really took off. According to Crunchbase, global venture investment in the industry increased nearly 75 percent, to $701 million in the first half of 2018. Given Epic’s round, Discord’s $150 million infusion of capital this week and several others since June, the second half of 2018 undoubtedly set major records in the space.
Uber: $1.2 billion
Travis Kalanick, co-founder and former chief executive officer of Uber Technologies Inc., speaks during the TiE Global Entrepreneurs Summit in New Delhi, India, on Friday, December 16, 2016. Kalanick said the company will introduce Uber Moto across India. Photographer: Udit Kulshrestha/Bloomberg via Getty Images
One of the largest rounds of 2018 was also one of the first big financings of the year. To be fair, the negotiations behind Uber’s $1.2 billion SoftBank investment and much of the press coverage surrounding it came in 2017, but the deal officially closed in January. This deal was monumental for many reasons. First of all, it made Uber founder and former chief executive officer Travis Kalanick a billionaire — not just on paper — and it cemented SoftBank’s position as the ride-hailing giant’s largest shareholder.
The financing brought San Francisco-based Uber’s total raised to date to just over $20 billion at a valuation said to be around $72 billion. Of course, Uber has since privately filed for an initial public offering slated for the first quarter of 2019.
Juul Labs: $1.2 billion
Juul Labs, the maker of the popular e-cigarette brand that has recently come under fire from health officials over its popularity with young adults, plans to introduce a line of lower-nicotine pods. Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Juul, one of the buzziest companies of 2018, raised $1.2 billion from private investors Tiger Global, Fidelity and more in mid-2018. Then, this month, the developer of e-cigarettes popular among teenagers accepted a $12.8 billion investment from the makers of Marlboro that valued it at $38 billion. Not only has Juul created significant controversy surrounding the ethics, or lack thereof, of its core product and its marketing to the younger generation in a short time, but it has also accumulated value at a clip rarely seen before. Juul, for context, surpassed a $10 billion valuation just seven months after its first round of VC backing — that’s four times faster than Facebook.
2019 is poised to be an interesting year for San Francisco-based Juul as it navigates public scrutiny, regulations and the completion of its partnership with Altria Group, which, according to Juul’s CEO Kevin Burns, will “help accelerate [Juul’s] success switching adult smokers.”
Magic Leap: $963M
Magic Leap’s flagship product, the Magic Leap One AR headset, began shipping to consumers this year.
It wouldn’t be an end of the year round-up of the largest VC deals without any mention of Magic Leap, the extremely well-funded virtual reality company. Tucked away in Plantation, Fla., 8-year-old Magic Leap has closed round after round, raising more than $2 billion to develop its hardware and software. The key investors in this year’s big round, which valued the company at $6.3 billion, were Temasek and AT&T, which announced it would become the exclusive “wireless distributor” of Magic Leap products in the U.S. starting this summer. Magic Leap is also backed by Google, Alibaba and Axel Springer.
Not only did Magic Leap land one of the largest VC deals this year, but it also finally began shipping to consumers its flagship product, the Magic Leap One AR headset. That was a long time coming — years, in fact. So long, many doubted whether the buzzy headsets would ever see the light of day. Now, the headsets are available to buyers in 48 states, though it’s worth mentioning they cost more than two grand.
Instacart: $600M
Founder and CEO of Instacart Apoorva Mehta and moderator Megan Rose Dickey speak onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016 at Pier 48 on September 14, 2016 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
Instacart has a lofty goal of delivering groceries to every household in the U.S., and it needs a lot of cash to get there. The company has raised VC every year since it completed the Y Combinator startup accelerator in 2012, and 2018 was no different. In October, the service brought in $600 million at a $7.6 billion valuation in a round led by D1 Capital Partners. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company has raised $1.6 billion to date from Coatue Management, Thrive Capital, Canaan Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and several others.
Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta told TechCrunch at the time that the startup didn’t really need the capital and that this was more of an “opportunistic” battle. The market is hot, after all, and Instacart has ambitious plans to scale and it has a fierce competitor in Amazon to take on. As for an IPO, Mehta said “it will be on the horizon.”
Katerra: $865M
SoftBank-backed Katerra says it’s brought in more than $1.3 billion in bookings for new construction ranging from residential to hospitality and student housing.
One of SoftBank’s first major bets of 2018 was on construction technology, with an $865 million investment in Katerra at a $3 billion valuation out of its Vision Fund. Katerra, a tech startup based out of Menlo Park, develops, designs and constructs buildings. At the time of its January fundraise, Katerra told TechCrunch it had brought in more than $1.3 billion in bookings for new construction ranging from residential to hospitality and student housing. Founded in 2015 by three former private equity barons, the company has raised a total of $1.1 billion to date from SoftBank, Foxconn, Greenoaks Capital and others.
In June, Katerra announced it would merge with KEF Infra, an offsite manufacturing technology specialist, and would begin operating in India and the Middle East markets.
Opendoor: $725M
Yet another SoftBank investment, San Francisco-based Opendoor is also backed by Fifth Wall Ventures, GV, Andreessen Horowitz and more.
Opendoor’s two big SoftBank-backed investments this year totaled $725 million, valuing the company at $2.5 billion. The deal gave SoftBank a minority stake in Opendoor, an online real estate marketplace, and put one of its five managing directors, Jeff Housenbold, on the company’s board of directors. The round brought Opendoor’s total funding to slightly more than $1 billion — most of which it acquired in 2018, a major year for the company. Founded in 2014, the San Francisco-based startup is also backed by Fifth Wall Ventures, GV, Andreessen Horowitz and more.
According to TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos, Housenbold had hoped to work with Opendoor co-founder and CEO Eric Wu for some time. “The minute he joined [SoftBank] he reached out to me and let me know … saying if there was an opportunity to work together, to reach out to him,” Wu said.
Lyft: $600M
Uber competitor Lyft expanded aggressively in 2018, raised hundreds of millions in additional venture capital funding, and filed confidentially to go public.
Lyft managed to stay quite busy this year. Not only did the ridesharing company raise a $600 million round at a $15.1 billion valuation, it also acquired bike-share operator Motivate and filed confidentially to go public. Founded in 2012 by Logan Green and John Zimmer, the company has long competed with Uber, and will continue to do so as the pair race to the public markets in early-2019. Lyft, much smaller than Uber and only active in the U.S. and Canada, has raised nearly $5 billion in venture backing from KKR, Mayfield, Didi Chuxing, Floodgate and others.
San Francisco-based Lyft has spent much of the last two years expanding rapidly across the U.S. market, as well as pursuing its autonomous vehicle ambitions.
Automation Anywhere: $550M
Automation Anywhere raised a monstrous $550 million Series A in 2018, with support from the SoftBank Vision Fund.
The only surprise to make this list is Automation Anywhere, a 15-year-old provider of robotic process automation. The company raised a total of $550 million in Series A funding, a large chunk of which came from the SoftBank Vision Fund, as well as NEA, General Atlantic and Goldman Sachs. The round valued Automation Anywhere at $2.6 billion. According to PitchBook, this was the first round of institutional backing for the San Jose, Calif.-based company.
In a conversation with TechCrunch, Automation Anywhere CEO Mihir Shukla said they were attracted to SoftBank because of Masayoshi So — the CEO and founder of SoftBank: “[He} has a vision and he is investing in foundational platforms that will change how we work and travel. We share that vision.”
Peloton: $500M
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 06: Peloton Co-Founder/CEO John Foley speaks onstage during Day 2 of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 at Moscone Center on September 6, 2018 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
Peloton’s growth exploded in 2018 as it launched its $4,000 treadmill, doubled down on original fitness streaming content and raised an additional $500 million in equity funding at a $5 billion valuation. The New York-based startup, often referred to as the “Netflix of fitness,” has raised nearly $1 billion in venture capital funding in the six years since it was founded by John Foley. It’s backed by L Catterton, True Ventures, Tiger Global and others.
It’s likely Peloton will take the public markets plunge in 2019 much like Uber and Lyft. Foley earlier this year told The Wall Street Journal that though he doesn’t have any concrete plans, 2019 “makes a lot of sense” for its stock market debut.
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Virtual reality gaming and the pursuit of ‘flow state’
Maggie Lane is a writer and producer of virtual reality experiences and covers the industry for various publications.
More posts by this contributor
You need to stop procrastinating. Maybe it’s time for some…
Bulletproof Coffee, Modafinil, nootropics, microdoses of acid, caffeine from coffee, caffeine from bracelets, aromatherapy, noise-canceling headphones, meditation, custom co-working spaces or productivity apps?
Whatever your choice, workers today (especially in the tech industry) will do just about anything to be more productive.
What we seek is that elusive, perfect focus — or flow state. According to researchers, someone in flow will experience a lack of sense of self, a decline in fear and time distortion. It is peak performance coupled with a euphoric high. All your happy neurotransmitters fire, and your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex performs differently — you do not second-guess yourself, you quite simply just flow into the next stages of the activity at hand. And you happen to be performing at the highest level possible. Sounds amazing, right?
But how do we invite this state in? A detailed piece in Fast Company outlines how extreme sports (professional surfing, steep incline skiing, skydiving, etc.) are the quickest way we’ve found to tap into human flow. Yet, these hobbies are just that — extreme. They require a large amount of skill and can be dangerous. For example, Steven Kotler, a pioneer in flow state research, broke almost 100 bones as a journalist researching the topic.
It all leads back to our collective (and very American) obsession with input versus output — are we achieving the most possible with the energy we put in? For all the bells and whistles at our disposal, we as a society are steadily declining in productivity as time goes on.
In 2014, a Gallup Poll found that the average American worker only spends a depressing 5 percent of their day in flow. A 2016 Atlantic article hypothesized that the main reason we’re decreasing in productivity as a workforce is that we’re not introducing new technologies quickly enough. Tech like robotics and smartphones could add a productivity push, but aren’t being integrated into the workplace. Business models are for the large part not that different from 10 years ago. In essence, we’re bored — we’re not being challenged in an engaging way, so we’re working harder than ever but achieving less.
But what if getting into flow state could be as easy as playing a video game?
Gameplay in RaveRunner
I first met Job Stauffer, co-founder and CCO at Orpheus Self-Care Entertainment, when I was, in fact, procrastinating from work. I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a clip of Job playing RaveRunner. As I love rhythm games, I immediately requested a build. Yet, I’d soon learn that this wasn’t just a simple VR experience.
RaveRunner was built for Vive, but easily ran on my Rift. When I first stepped into the game, I felt a bit overwhelmed — there was a lot of dark empty space; almost like something out of TRON. It was a little scary, which is actually very helpful for entering flow state. However, my fear soon dissipated as before me was a transparent yellow lady (Job calls her “Goldie”) dancing with the beat — providing a moving demo for gameplay. Unlike the hacking nature of Beat Saber, where you smash blocks with lightsabers, in RaveRunner you touch blue and orange glowing circles with your controllers, and move your whole body to the rhythm of the music.
There’s a softer, feminine touch to RaveRunner, and it wasn’t just Goldie. Behind the design of this game is a woman, Ashley Cooper, who is the developer responsible for the gameplay mechanics that can help a player attain flow. “Being in the flow state is incredibly rewarding and we strive to help people reach it by creating experiences like RaveRunner,” says Cooper. RaveRunner is a game you can get lost in, and by stimulating so many senses it allows you to let your higher level thoughts slip away — you become purely reactionary and non-judgmental.
In essence — flow.
After playing in this world for an hour, I called Job and learned more about his company. Apart from RaveRunner, Orpheus has also rolled out two other experiences — MicrodoseVR and SoundSelf. I got my first hands-on demo of all three products in one sitting at a cannabis technology event in Los Angeles, Grassfed LA. Grassfed is specifically geared toward higher-brow, hip tech enthusiasts; and the Orpheus suite of products fit right in.
As I lay in a dome with meditative lighting, a subwoofer purring below me, SoundSelf gave me one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had in VR. I chanted into a microphone and my voice directly influenced the visuals before me. It felt like my spirit, the God particle, whatever you want to call it, was being stimulated from all these sensations. It was such a beautiful experience, but also was pure flow. I felt two minutes pass in the experience. I would have bet a hundred dollars on this. But I was inside for 10. Time didn’t make sense — a key indicator of flow state.
Next up was Microdose VR. I first tried Microdose VR in 2016 at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. Esalen is the birthplace of the human potential movement, and so it was fitting that it was there, where I initially grasped the potential of VR for transformational experiences. Every other experience I had tried up to that point had been First Person Shooters or 360-video marketing pieces. And not to slight those experiences, but I felt that VR must be able to do MORE. Android Jones’ Microdose blew my mind. Like with SoundSelf, I completely lost track of time. I was directly impacting visuals with my body movements, and sound was a big factor as well. It was the first time I could easily imagine staying in VR for hours. Most of all, it was an experience that was only possible within VR. The game was the biggest euphoric rush I’ve felt in VR, and that feeling occurred again at this event.
We have the power as consumers to play games that tie in intrinsically with self-care but often don’t have options available. Job was propelled down this path when he asked himself “if I invest one hour of my time per day into playing a video game, what will I personally gain from that time invested, and will I even have time left over to do genuinely good things for myself?”
Orpheus is pioneering the fusion of game design with traditional self-care practices like meditation, dance/exercise, listening to music and creating art: “In short, we simply want players to feel amazing and have zero regrets about their time spent playing our games, allowing them to walk away knowing they have leveled up themselves, instead of their in-game avatars alone.”
One thing that will make it easier for people to try these experiences are portable headsets such as the ViveFocus and the Oculus Quest. Being untethered will allow people to travel with VR wherever they may go. Job sees this fundamental shift right ahead of us, as “video games and self-care are about to become one in the same. A paradigm shift. This is why all immersive Orpheus Self-Care Entertainment projects will be engineered for this critically important wave of VR.”
Orpheus is not a VR-only company, although their first three experiences are indeed for VR. As they expand, they hope to open up to a variety of types of immersive experiences, and are continually looking for projects that align with their holistic mission.
At the end of the day, I love that Orpheus is attempting to tap into a part of the market that so desperately needs their attention. If we don’t make self-care a major part of VR today, then we’ll continue to use VR as a distraction from, as opposed as a tool to enhance, our daily lives.
As for me, along with the peppermint tea, grapefruit candle and music that make my focus possible, I’ll now be adding some Orpheus games into my flow repertoire.
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