The Venture Reality Fund from Silicon Valley and LucidWeb from France have released a report that identifies nearly 300 companies in Europe that are developing business in the VR ecosystem.
The research shows that games are the most competitive space, with well-funded companies including CCP Games (Iceland), nDreams (United Kingdom), Resolution Games (Sweden), and Solfar Studios (Iceland).And user input technology — focused on interactions in VR by brain (BCI), body, eye, feet, and hand — has many premium players, such as the Swiss-based company MindMaze that raised $100 million, the largest amount raised in one round by any European VR company.
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Companies are also creating 360-degree VR capture hardware and software, with two French companies, VideoStitch and Giroptic, at the forefront.
Beyond games, the enterprise is gaining traction, with real estate VR generating significant additional revenue for online agencies across Europe. Sweden’s Diakrit and Netherlands-based TheConstruct are two companies leading the charge.
French companies Homido and MindMaze and Swedish-based Starbreeze are the most advanced hardware companies developing a mobile Head Mounted Display (HMD) or tethered HMD.
Companies in eVR post-production are developing 3D tools, and leading American software companies have acquired several of these startups over the past two years: Google acquired Irish Thrive Audio, Facebook acquired Scotland-based Two Big Ears, and Snapchat acquired London-based Seen/Obvious Engineering.
Health care and fitness companies are utilising VR for medical training, mental treatments (anxiety, Asperger’s syndrome), and physical rehabilitation. Spain-based Psious and Amsterdam-based MDlinking are two companies to watch in this category.
More than half of the companies included in the landscape are based in the UK, France, Germany, and Sweden. Overall, France is taking the lead in VR in continental Europe.
Analyst Comment
We will be catching up with a lot of French and other European VR companies when we go to Virtual Laval next month. If you are in the market, the event is worth a visit. (BR)
