According to a recent report by Digi-Capital, investors have injected some pretty big bucks into companies focusing on augmented and virtual reality lately. A total of $686 million in 2015 alone. The most interesting bit: they aren’t counting Magic Leap.
Digi-Capital, a Menlo Park-based AR, VR, mobile, and games M&A advisor, is tallying a number of sectors in their report, including non-entertainment apps, games, solutions/services, video, and both AR and VR head-mounted displays.
Interesting to note is just how much money went into video, a good portion likely going to video services like NextVR ($30.5m series A) that’s gearing up to deliver 360 video of live sports and events, and Jaunt ($65M Series C), a company that creates ‘cinematic-grade’ video capture hardware, software, and content. A sizeable $136 million of 2015’s VR investment dollars was raised in November alone.
The company is selling their in-depth report which covers a number of topics including (but not limited to) AR/VR company reviews, market forecasts for 2016-2020, investments, and acquisitions.
Another report from Digi-Capital estimates AR/VR revenue to hit an incredibly high $120 billion by the year 2020, showing AR taking the lion’s share of the market in the belief that it will appeal more to the mass market.
Forecasts are somewhat fickle, as they often rely upon best case-scenarios and publicly available information for their data. But they are called ‘forecasts’ for a reason, as companies like Digi-Capital continuously update as hard market data becomes available.
Considering we don’t know exactly what sort of hardware will actually be available in that time span—for example if manufacturers start to focus on delivering both AR and VR in the same headset—the division we see here may not be as clear cut.
See Also: On Expectations – What Our Audience Thinks About Rift, Vive, and PlayStation VR Prices
There’s still no telling what Magic Leap will pull out of their hats (and just how developers can start building apps for it); the mysterious startup raised a whopping $542 million Series B lead by Google in late 2014.
Disclosure: Road to VR will be co-publishing a VR industry report with research firm Greenlight VR later this year.
