Miris, a Culver City-based spatial computing startup, launched in late August armed with $26 million in funding – the largest round raised in the spatial systems space since 2015, according to Pitchbook. The seed funding round was led by IAG Capital Partners.
“There has been more excitement in the spatial computing space in the last few months than they have in the last five years,” Marlin Prager, Miris’ chief executive and cofounder, said.
Spatial computing allows technology to better bring the virtual world into reality through applications like augmented reality and virtual reality. While the concept seems, on its head, like a sophisticated technological advancement, it suffers from a rather dated problem: assets need to be downloaded in order to be used.
These days, we can expect to stream music or high-quality videos that don’t drag or pixelate without needing to download content – Miris wants to change that for spatial computing.
“The success of Netflix, TikTok, Spotify and YouTube have shown that streaming is the preferred way to consume content,” Joel Whitley, a partner at IAG Capital Partners, said in a statement. “We believe that spatial computing will not see widespread adoption unless and until high fidelity, interactive spatial content can be delivered to consumers for easy consumption – via streaming.”
It’s true that VR and AR haven’t seen the kind of widespread adoption that was expected in the mid 2010s when the Oculus VR system came onto the market. When Apple revealed in February its highly anticipated Vision Pro headset, a $3,499 computer you can wear on your face, the company called it a “spatial computer” instead of the more common vernacular “VR headset.” Apple’s sales of the headset were underwhelming.
“We believe the world is going to land in more smaller compact devices. The Vision Pro is an amazing device and their footprint is getting smaller and less cumbersome,” Prager, who was once the chief financial officer at Legendary Entertainment, said. “There are a number of things that have to happen in the ecosystem where it starts to reach scale and where everyone will own an AR device like they own a smartphone.”
