Leap Motion develops computer-vision hand-tracking that reproduces a virtual skeletal model of the hand and updates based on users' hand positions. Its core product targets VR and AR interfaces as an alternative to handheld controllers and traditional mouse-and-keyboard input. The seven-year-old company has raised nearly $95 million to date and just closed a $50 million Series C. Despite technical sophistication, Leap Motion has struggled to find clear interface problems to solve and to attract manufacturer support. Its most prominent partnership is with Qualcomm on a headset reference design for OEMs. The company says it will broaden into commercial and enterprise applications including education, healthcare, and industrial training simulation, and will open a new office in Shanghai. Leap Motion builds a small, iPod-sized gesture controller that creates an 8-cubic-foot 3D interaction space and tracks individual hands and fingers at 290 frames per second with sub-millimeter precision. The company reports more than 40,000 developers signed up and 12,000 developer units already shipped. Leap Motion planned to ship its consumer controller in the first quarter and is pursuing distribution via bundling deals and integrations with PC manufacturers. It announced a bundling partnership with Asus for All‑In‑One PCs and high-end notebooks and said it will pursue additional bundling and embedding deals. The firm intends to use new funding primarily to build inventory so it can ship “hundreds of thousands to millions of units.” Company leadership cited a mix of existing apps adding gesture controls and applications being built natively for the platform as the app ecosystem matures. Leap Motion, which recently changed its name from OcuSpec, is developing motion-control software and hardware intended to address 3D motion control and motion sensing. The company says its approach is unique from existing products and could have broad implications across computing and device interaction. Product details have not been disclosed publicly; the firm remains in stealth regarding the exact product form. CEO Michael Buckwald has framed the effort as a solution to the challenge of 3D motion control. The company positions itself as aiming to change the future of human/computer interaction. Financially, Leap Motion has raised a total of $14.55 million to date. OcuSpec is a stealth motion-control startup developing technology its founder calls "radically more powerful and affordable than anything currently available." The company aims to deliver an affordable, platform-agnostic 3D motion-control solution that can work across laptops, TVs and other devices. OcuSpec currently has functional demo units that track hand and body movement to enable embedded 3D motion control. Founder Michael Buckwald and co-founder David Holtz, a former NASA engineer, are leading the effort. The startup raised $1.3M in seed financing to advance development. OcuSpec plans to use the funding to hire additional staff and expand its "already extensive" patent portfolio.

Total raised

$94M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Jul 2017