San Francisco based VC firm Rothenberg Ventures has announced the second class of their ‘River’ program, which includes $1 million of investment capital across 10 new VR startups. With this second class the firm has also expanded the scope of the River program to include other companies in the realm of ‘frontier tech’.
The River program is an initiative by Rothenberg Ventures launched back in January that sought to foster VR startup growth with $1.3 million in investments across 13 VR companies. Those companies would also get access to Rothenberg Ventures’ SF office space and meet with the program’s roster of advisors to help hone their products. It was all capped of with the ‘Founder Field Day’ event which put the companies on display for investors.
See Also: ‘River’ VR Accelerator Startups Showcased at Founder Field Day (part 1)
River is moving to a bi-annual cadence as the program’s second class of startups is today announced. The program is also expanding its scope beyond VR, into the wider world of ‘frontier tech’, which Rothenberg Ventures says includes VR, AR, AI, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Robotics and more.
Rothenberg Ventures says they sifted through some 600 companies to select those that would join River. Of the 14 companies joining the second River class, 10 are in the VR sector, including a few names that will be known to denizens of Road to VR:
Rival Theory, Vicarious Surgical, and Awawarp are also making use of VR, though Rothenberg Ventures primarily categorizes the former as an Artificial Intelligence company and the latter two as Robotics companies.
Non-VR companies joining the second River class include GeoCV, Fringefy, Wade & Wendy, and GetVu.
Rothenberg Ventures says that their first River class of 13 companies have raised more than $10 million in follow-on capital since finishing the program. The company says they’re committing $10 million to River over the next year, and will raise the per-company investment to $200,000 starting in Spring 2016.
