Matterport began by making high-end cameras and has expanded into a broader platform that captures, converts and serves 3D imagery of interior and enclosed spaces. It uses an AI engine, packaged as Matterport Cloud 3.0, to convert 2D panoramic and 360-degree images into 3D models and is currently beta-testing Cloud 3.0 ahead of a full launch. Cloud 3.0 will initially support the Ricoh Theta V, Theta Z1, Insta360 ONE X and the Leica Geosystems BLK360 laser scanner. The company reports a library of 1.6 million 3D images and millions of 2D images and aims to grow that library to 100 million over the coming years to serve as a marketplace and training data source. Those images will both train Matterport’s machine learning and be made accessible to other businesses via APIs, enabling use cases such as virtual restaging and immersive mapping. Matterport has also made key hires, including CEO RJ Pittman, a chief design officer and a VP of hardware, to support its cloud and product strategy. Matterport offers an advanced platform and the Matterport Cloud to automatically create, understand and distribute 3D models, high-quality 4K photography, floorplans and other property assets for web, mobile and VR. The system automates capture and documentation to enable complete records of a property’s features, dimensions, conditions and contents. The company has amassed a large library of nearly one million 3D models and reports over 900,000 spaces captured with more than 300 million views globally. Matterport operates a network of 3,000+ service providers across 90 countries and serves industries including residential and commercial real estate, multifamily, hospitality, architecture, engineering, construction, insurance and facilities management. The company is led by CEO Bill Brown and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with additional offices in San Francisco, Chicago and an EMEA headquarters in London. Recent investment activity is intended to accelerate expansion in the insurance sector, extend its 3D and VR business solutions and build out global infrastructure. Matterport develops 3D capture technology that creates immersive 360-degree models of physical spaces, primarily for commercial and real estate customers. The company has a large library of environments—users have uploaded over a half million public and private scans, many viewable in VR. It sells hardware such as the Pro2 camera, launched in May and retailing for $3,995, to produce both 3D and 2D imagery. Matterport plans to use new funding to accelerate deep learning and AI development to extract more insights from scans and to improve 3D image quality. CEO Bill Brown said Ericsson Ventures sees opportunity to use Matterport’s library of 3D models as a training dataset for next-generation products. Financially, the company announced a $5 million raise from Ericsson Ventures, bringing its total announced funding to $66 million according to Crunchbase. Matterport builds tools that scan physical spaces into high-resolution 3D models viewable in web viewers and VR headsets. Its core product is the Matterport Pro camera (priced at $4,500), which uses Lidar to capture spatial scans, plus a hosting/subscription business with monthly plans ranging $49–$149. The company reported platform engagement rising from 10 million visits in August 2015 to over 60 million visits to nearly 270,000 scanned structures a year later. Revenue is derived from both camera sales and recurring subscription hosting fees. Matterport is pursuing expansion into non-US regions and the commercial real estate vertical and is leveraging strategic partners to access those channels. Company leaders say they have “plenty of cash” and view VR as an important but still early-stage distribution channel. Matterport sells a professional $4,500 camera and cloud software that stitch captured imagery into navigable 3D/VR scenes for properties and other interior spaces. The company is shifting from hardware toward a software and mobile-first strategy, aiming to enable smartphone-based scanning via partnerships and an SDK/API stack. Matterport announced a landmark partnership with Google’s Project Tango (and plans involving Intel’s RealSense sensor) to let phones serve as the cameras while Matterport provides the stitching and hosting layer. The company has sold thousands of cameras, produced tens of thousands of virtual scenes, and its content is explored by over 1.2 million unique viewers per month. CEO Bill Brown said the business could very easily be cash-flow positive based on current revenue, but the company is investing its new funding to hire talent and accelerate mobile VR scanning development. Matterport originated from the Xbox Kinect hacker scene in 2010 and launched commercially after Y Combinator.

Total raised

$107M

Funding rounds

8

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Mar 2019