Photo credit: Artomatix
It’s astounding how much cash consumers will upfront to get theirs hands on the latest animated blockbuster or video game. Which is fortunate, considering that getting graphics to move across the screen is far from fast or cheap to do. But new investment in a startup may soon cut this cost significantly.
Artomatix, the AI software firm, closed a £2.37m funding round led by Suir Valley Ventures, the VC firm. The main attraction for investors is Artomatix’s patented software, which boasts saving time in producing pricy photo-realistic graphics by 80% and is what Artomatix claims “the world’s first 3D art engine.”
It may be a saving grace to some entertainment industries, given increasingly popular photogrammetry can put years on a game’s or film’s production cycle. For example, the remake of the video game Resident Evil 2, which uses photogrammetry, began development in 2015 and is only expected to wrap up in 2019.
Artomatix’s solutions have certainly turned heads, considering it received $100,000 from NVIDIA, the graphic card producer, in 2015 as well as a €2.1m seed round lead by Enterprise Ireland, the government agency, in 2017. And with this latest investment, the startup looks to boost global market delivery.
It’s hardly surprising that multiple investors are interested in this space. The computer graphics market is predicted to hit $212bn by 2023 according to Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence, the market research firm, leaping from a forecasted $151bn in 2022.
And technology used in video games has attracted a lot of attention from VCs recently. For instance, the virtual world-creating startup Improbable reached unicorn status in May 2017 after a huge cash injection from SoftBank.
Commenting on the news of the new funding round, Joe Blake, CEO of Artomatix, said: “The really exciting thing for me is to see how 3D design concepts pioneered in the entertainment space have 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.”
While it’s always exciting to hear about British businesses making it good, we can’t personally not wait to tell our parents that no good will come out of video games. 
