Virtuix, a Houston, TX-based developer of the Omni virtual reality treadmill, completed a $3m seed round of funding.
Backers included Tekton Ventures, Maveron, Scentan Ventures, Radical Investments, Scout Ventures, StartCaps Ventures, among others.
The company intends to use the funds to expand production and distribution of the Omni.
Led by CEO Jan Goetgeluk, Virtuix provides a patent-pending, omni-directional treadmill that enables the user to walk, run, and jump within a 360-degree virtual environment, creating a sense of immersion and presence within virtual worlds that could span areas such as gaming, fitness, tourism, and social gatherings.
The company had raised $1.1m via Kickstarter to launch the company and development of the Omni (read here) and pre-sold more than 3,000 units to date.
Virtuix was recently featured in a post dedicated to VR I recently wrote for StarTOOLS, the blog of LuissEnlabs, the Rome, Italy-based startup incubator (read here). This round confirms the trend with crowdfunders acting as “the first backers” of the virtual reality ecosystem, who validate ideas and pre-order products. Venture capital comes at a later stage.
FinSMEs
24/04/2014