NEWS & MEDIA

Suir Valley Ventures (‘Suir Valley’ or ‘the Company’) Investment in AI software company Artomatix

8 October 2018

Suir Valley Ventures, the entrepreneur-led venture capital fund launched in partnership with Shard Capital Partners LLP to invest in early stage software companies across a range of verticals including augmented/virtual reality (‘AR/VR’), the Internet of Things (‘IoT’) and FinTech, has led a €2.7 million investment in Artomatix, a ground-breaking Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) start-up delivering software for 3D content creation.  This is Suir Valley’s sixth investment in innovative technology companies including: AIM listed educational VR business, Immersive VR Education; leading IoT cloud platform, Wia; accelerator NDRC@Arclabs; reality games developer, WarDucks; and IoT fleet and driver management systems company, ProVision.

 

Overview

  • Artomatix has developed revolutionary, award-winning, patented software proven to reduce by as much as 80% the time needed for the creation of 3D art used in digital production
  • Buoyant computer graphics market expected to reach US$212 billion by the end of 2023
  • Recent report cites Artomatix as a major industry player, alongside NVIDIA, Pixar, Adobe Systems and others
  • New funds will be used to accelerate Artomatix’s market delivery worldwide

 

Artomatix is an award-winning AI software firm with offices in London, Dublin and San Francisco that has radically changed how 3D content gets created across multiple verticals; its patented software has been proven to reduce the time needed for expensive 3D art creation by as much as 80%.

 

Real-world scans are increasingly becoming the gold standard way to generate high-end 3D content in games, movies, industrial prototyping and interior design, enabling studios to deliver ground-breaking results. From facial-scanning footballers’ facial expressions in Fifa 19, to creating full-length walking Muppets in the ‘HappyTime Murders’, photogrammetry unlocks the key to incredible content, however, end results can often take months or even years to deliver and are expensive.

 

Artomatix uses neural-nets to drastically reduce the time needed to handle many aspects of the scan-based artistic workflow.  It has been exciting 3D artists at AAA Studios around the globe, who took note when NVIDIA awarded the firm $100K and the label of most promising start-up in 2015.  Since that time, it has been further developing its software and building its client base; it is now focused on using the new funds totalling €2.7 million to accelerate its market delivery worldwide.

 

Artomatix operates in a high growth sector.  According to a 2018 report by Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence LLP, the computer graphics market is expected to reach US$212 billion by the end of 2023 (up from US$151 billion the year before), due to hyper growth in demand, driven by new platforms like AR/VR, increasing internet penetration and smartphone usage.  A mushrooming media and entertainment industry is driving demand for high end software solutions, alongside new demand from automotive and industrial design sectors. The same report cites Artomatix as a major industry player, alongside NVIDIA, Pixar, Adobe Systems and others.

 

Suir Valley Ventures Managing Partner, Barry Downes, said, “We believe Artomatix not only complements our existing portfolio, it also allows us to access the new convergence of 3D design and AI.  Its technology is about to significantly change every industry exposed to 3D content, cutting costs, speeding up the rendering process and enabling the creation of truly ground-breaking graphics. 

 

Artomatix CEO, Joe Blake, said, “The really exciting thing for me is to see the 3D design concepts that have been pioneered in the entertainment space now become standard for product design and visualisation within mainstream industries like fashion, furniture and automotive. With an increasingly global audience, this investment will allow us to scale rapidly, and reach those international markets.”

 

– ENDS –

 

For further information, please visit https://suirvalleyventures.com or contact:

 

Simon Hughes Share Capital +44 (0) 20 7186 9918
Isabel de Salis / Priit Piip St Brides Partners (Financial PR) +44 (0) 20 7236 1177
Emily Ross Artomatix emily@inkvine.ie

 

Notes to Editors

Suir Valley Ventures is an entrepreneur-led venture capital fund launched in Ireland in 2017, which invests in early stage software companies across Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), Internet of Things (IoT) and FinTech sectors. Suir Valley Ventures works in partnership with Shard Capital, which is London based independent financial services company offering a full range of broking, asset management and corporate capital services.   Investments include:

 

Artomatix is an award-winning AI software company that helps to automate the 3D artistic workflow. Based in Dublin, Ireland, and with offices in the UK and the US, Artomatix was founded by Dr. Eric Risser, an expert in the combined fields of artificial intelligence and computer graphics. Since its inception in 2014, Artomatix has won NVIDIA’s Early Stage Challenge (2015, $100k), reached the top 2.5% of TechCrunch Disrupt (2015) and the top 0.8% of Hello Tomorrow (2015). In March 2017, Artomatix closed a seed round of €2.1m which included €1.5m for the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 SME programme. Artomatix will open a second US office in 2019.

NEXT STORY


Most read