Recently, Atlas officially announced the acquisition of roughly $6 million in a seed funding round following two years of the firm developing its enterprise and commercial-grade genAI-powered XR content creation platform under wraps. This marks an essential point in the industry as devices are becoming cheaper and more accessible, meaning content creation will be needed to support the hardware promises.
Platforms such as the one Atlas is offering are of massive importance currently as headset vendors and enterprise end-users need a more diverse developer talent pool and service offerings to allow XR into the office and homes. Easy-to-use XR content creation platforms are vital to supporting adoption rates.
The firm is gaining capital investment via two rounds this month. Atlas secured $4.5 million in a round led by 6th Man Ventures (6MV) and an additional $1.5 million in another round led by Collab+Currency. Additionally, Atlas is leveraging a research grant from the European Union’s High-Level Expert Group on AI. On the R&D side, Atlas is developing its new technology solution in compliance with the union’s Ethical Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence.
The Founder of Atlas, Ben James, noted that following an experience of working “at the intersection of design and technology,” Atlas is ready to secure enterprise and commercial clients with an easy-to-use content creation platform to suit a variety of use cases from virtual events to eCommerce routes.
James also added:
I’m a self-taught coder and I thought that there would maybe be an interesting way to look at architecture through the guise of machine vision. 2D drawings like plans and sections and elevations are inherently embedded with three dimensional information through line weights, annotations, etc. And what we started playing around with at Atlas was if there was a way to connect machine vision learning information from 2D imagery, and bringing that into the 3D world.
Moreover, Atlas is working with leading gaming and RT3D content developers and brands to optimise the genAI platform to streamline and reduce the time required to create XR immersive experiences. The platform achieves a streamlined and simplified workflow by allowing low-experience developers to develop 3D XR content based on image or text inputs.
Creating a Tech Stack that Benefits the End-User
Atlas is developing the GenAI XR content creation platform to help clients quickly design applications, from marketing to gaming. According to Atlas, enterprise and commercial end-users can leverage the platform to build bespoke virtual worlds, assets, and designs, for example.
The technology stack behind Atlas’ solutions – notably, genAI – plays the most significant role in diversifying general enterprise XR product offerings. By leveraging genAI, Atlas can support a vast range of developer talent designing in-house immersive applications.
Notably, Atlas is also developing in-house proprietary software that the firm created in collaboration with a team of AI, gaming, and 3D design experts, further simplifying development pipelines – allowing developers to complete projects “200 times faster,” according to the firm. The firm is working with Consortium 9, Shrapnel, and Square Enix to optimise the service, the latter two of which are now investing in the Atlas genAI platform.
James added:
One of the things that I think we’ve done pretty effectively is we’ve worked with some really high-profile game developers to help build out large virtual worlds, but where we see a tremendous need for this type of technology is to help smaller indie game developers create these worlds, games that would be impossible to create otherwise. So constantly evolving and changing maps, adding elements of user-generated content that is stylistically consistent into these gameplay mechanics. Generally speaking, the kind of overriding principle that we follow is that we think that games are becoming platforms, but more specific to us, we think creation is becoming part of the gameplay and so that’s where we try to target Atlas’ technology.
Atlas is exclusively making its service available for enterprise and commercial end-users, with brands and businesses demanding an avenue to leveraging the emerging XR landscape and its proposed benefits – at a time when immersive technology leaders are building 2024 as a landmark year for XR.
Although Atlas plans to debut a public release version in the coming months via an alpha testing period, aiming at small-scale and independent creators.
With the increasing demand for XR content creation platforms, developer services must stay aware of the emerging market trends next year. The prominent players in the XR industry, like Meta and Microsoft, are promoting their in-house content creation platforms. The competition in the immersive content development sector is already fierce, and it is expected to grow even more.
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