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THE STATE of the EUROPEAN VR INDUSTRY INTRODUCTION a New World of VR Ventures

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THE STATE of the EUROPEAN VR INDUSTRY INTRODUCTION a New World of VR Ventures THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN VR INDUSTRY INTRODUCTION A new world of VR ventures Virtual reality (VR) has enjoyed an unexpected comeback since Facebook Our findings show that gaming remains an important market, proven by the bought Oculus in July 2014. Amid high expectations, high-end, tethered large number of companies receiving funding, from across the region. head mounted displays (HMDs) such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and Content creators in Europe also started experimenting with the relatively mobile HMDs like Samsung Gear VR and Daydream, finally came to new format, learning to capture with a 360° camera and sharing immersive market in 2015 and 2016. stories. The logical result was a sharp increase in the number and size of VR But, as with attempts at VR in the past, this resurgence has struggled to funding rounds in 2016. The sector has had a strong start in 2017, with captivate mainstream audiences and is seemingly relying on early adopters Improbable’s staggering €443.7 million funding round in Q2, the largest and gamers. Many startups specialising in infrastructure and tools have ever venture financing round for a private British company. emerged to tackle poor market penetration and have successfully secured funding. Other more mature VR companies in the fields of user input, 3D For this report, we partnered with virtual reality (VR) experts LucidWeb tools and reality capture have been acquired. to dive into funding and exits numbers on VR companies from Europe, Israel and Turkey. We focused on the period of Q1 2015 to Q2 2017. To keep the report focused, companies specialising only in augmented reality (AR) were not included, but considering the growing importance of AR and These numbers were gleaned from Tech.eu’s comprehensive database of mixed reality (MR) for VR companies, they are likely to be included in the funding rounds and exits across the European region. The database is next edition. compiled from our meticulous monitoring of hundreds of news sources in multiple languages. The report also features insights from the recent We’ve worked hard to make this report as comprehensive and valuable as European Virtual Reality Landscape, a joint project of The Venture possible. Please refer to the end of this report for methodology and Reality fund (The VR Fund) and LucidWeb. disclaimers. Note: The analysis of The VR Fund does not take into consideration Israeli For any questions or comments regarding the report we invite you to email based companies, Tech.eu does include them. [email protected]. INTRODUCTION Expert perspectives “Despite many recent advances, the industry simply needs more time to mature. The consumer demand will naturally start increasing as we remove unnecessary friction in using bulky devices, improve the underlying technologies, and create better cross-platform experiences. While VR gaming is still attractive to many investors, we see opportunities in technologies that enable more people to relate to the mixed reality, and to access more relevant information in the right context.” Ekaterina Gianelli, Investment Director at Inventure http://inventure.fi/ @ekagianelli “We can see that most past VR-related investments are in gaming, again confirmed by the additional nDreams round announced in July 2017. I believe that is going to change and we should see more and more technology investments in computer vision IP & tools, to feed into mixed reality platforms. We can also see that most big investors are non-European companies, and although the big technology firms’ venture funds such as Alcatel, Siemens etc are still lagging behind, there should be an increase of investments in European IP/tech from those in the coming year, especially due to AR’s current high- growth potential.” ThoMas Gere, Founder & CEO of Realities Centre http://realitiescentre.coM @ToM_Gere INTRODUCTION Expert perspectives “We see that the industry continues to mature, especially on the content side. There was a slow-down between Q3 2016 and Q2 2017, which was a rationalisation from venture capitalists, demonstrating that VR forecasts made in 2013-2015 were not realistic, and that consumer pull was still lacking.” “Now, we see a second wave of interest in VR from both B2C and B2B, as sales numbers of HMDs continue to grow. The ecosystems in Amsterdam and Berlin are becoming more active and dynamic, and our members and startups are starting to mature and establish revenue streams. Of course, it is still challenging, but Europe has an advantage over the US and Asia in high-end content creation and we need to push this advantage to grow our European VR/AR industry and market size, and materialise this opportunity. Hardware prices going down and more headsets arriving to market will definitely boost the already existing need for amazing content, so this and next year, I see this as an opportunity for Europe to put our continent on the map as the world's leading content provider for immersive media.” Daan Kip Founder & CEO VRBASE vrbase.co @DaanKip INTRODUCTION Expert perspectives “One of the major drivers of the VR industry in Europe is its booming gaming sector, with well- known publishers like CCP Games, nDreams and Resolution Games.” “In this report, we also see the strength of the competition from European VR startups focusing on User Input, Tool Development and Hardware. France and Sweden are taking the lead in terms of the highest number of VR startups that successfully received funding since Q1 2015, closely followed by the United Kingdom. As a Silicon Valley-based venture fund, we have been closely monitoring the exciting innovations and entrepreneurial activities across Europe. We already made one investment in a Finnish company, Vizor, and plan to do more in the next 12 months.” Marco DeMiroz Co-Founder & General Partner The Venture Reality Fund thevrfund.coM @marcodeMiroz INDEX Introduction & Expert perspectives 2-5 Top investors by amount 17 Index 6 Top rounds in key VR categories 18-22 Key takeaways 7-8 Notable VR funding rounds 23-28 VR funding analysis 9 VR exits analysis 29 Key funding trends 10 Key exit trends 30 Funding by quarter 11 Exits by quarter 31 Funding by stage 12 Exits by country 32 Funding rounds by size of investment 13 Exits by category 33 Funding rounds by country 14 Largest disclosed exits 34 Top 10 funding rounds 15 Notable VR exits 35-38 Funding by VR category 16 Methodology and disclaimers 39-40 KEY FUNDING TAKEAWAYS KEY EXIT TAKEAWAYS VR FUNDING ANALYSIS KEY FUNDING TRENDS Improbable breaks records Most financing deals under €5 million The UK saw its biggest ever venture financing round for a While VR remains a fairly young technology (although early headsets private company in May 2017 when Improbable, which offers date back to the mid-90s), most seed investments have been modest a platform for third parties to build virtual worlds, raised an since the beginning of 2015, with only a few stand-out deals. impressive €443.7 million. The company raised three of the largest VR rounds during the period we looked at in this The category ‘3D Tools’ sees largest investment volume, ‘Games’ and report: January 2015 to May 2017. The company has ‘User input’ the highest number of deals significantly raised the bar for European VR investments. We separated all the deals into the VR categories used by The VR Fund. Sweden leads the way Perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘3D Tools’ was the category that saw the biggest investment over the period thanks to Improbable, while With hot VR companies like Starbreeze and Crunchfish ‘Games’ and ‘User input’ had the highest number of deals at 16 and 15, securing significant funding rounds, Sweden had the most respectively. But an impressive number of non-gaming VR companies deals at 18. The Scandinavian country, which boasts several in Europe attracted large funding rounds, such as MindMaze with its other innovative VR companies that attracted funding, was innovative healthcare system. The company received a €90.9 million closely followed by France, which saw 15 deals since the investment in February 2016, and is currently valued at $1 billion (€892 beginning of 2015. million). ANALYSIS Funding by quarter (Q1 2015 - Q2 2017) • Due to the record-breaking Improbable funding round, Q2 2017 outstripped any quarter since we started tracking by VR category in 2015, with a whopping $502 million (€440 million). • Q2 2015 saw the lowest number of deals, as well as the lowest investment volume in the period, at €4.4 million. • Prior to the most recent quarter, Q1 2016 had the highest funding amount at €129.6 million, thanks to major rounds raised by MindMaze and Starbreeze. • 2016 saw the highest number of deals with 48, 128.6% more than 2015, which only had 21. Period Deals InvestMent voluMe 2015 21 €122.2 million • The impressive Q2 2017 stands in stark contrast to 2016 48 €201.6 million the previous quarter, which only saw €9.5 million, the INSERT % CHANGE TABLE lowest amount raised since Q2 2015. Change +128.6% +65% 2016 H1 21 €115.9 million 2017 H1 19 €490.5 million Change -9.5% +214.6% ANALYSIS Funding by stage (Q1 2015 - Q2 2017) • Early VC and seed funding make up the majority of deals over the period. • It’s worth noting that the huge Improbable funding round was a series B round, which makes it all the more impressive considering investments of that size are usually made at a much later stage. • A steady stream of seed rounds between 2016 Q2 and 2016 Q4 positioned 2016 as a standout year for European VR funding. ANALYSIS Funding rounds by size of investment (Q1 2015 - Q2 2017) • The majority of VR funding deals have fallen firmly in the under €5 million category, with several low-value deals being offered to seed- stage companies.
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