Jaunt, the cinematic VR company that pivoted to AR last year, today announced it has sold its software, technology, and “certain other assets” to American telecom Verizon.
Neither company has disclosed the acquisition price, or if that will include any of Jaunt’s remaining staff, although Jaunt says it will be assisting Verizon for a brief period of time with the transition of “select portions of the software and technology.”
“We are thrilled with Verizon’s acquisition of Jaunt’s technology,” said Jaunt XR CEO Mitzi Reaugh in a press statement. “The Jaunt team has built leading-edge software and we are excited for its next chapter with Verizon.”
Founded in 2013, Jaunt became known not only for producing its high-quality 360 video for consumers, but also a 360 camera dubbed Jaunt One (formerly NEO) aimed at idustry professionals looking to get into immersive video capture.
In October 2018, Jaunt made the critical to decision to pivot to AR and lay off a significant portion of its staff in the process. Since then, the company has most recently been involved in the design and training of neural networks for real-time human pose estimation and body part segmentation, something that’s aimed at creating volumetric videos and 3D models of humans for playback on AR/VR devices.
Throughout its lifespan, the company secured over $100 million from the likes of Disney, Sky, and Axel Springer, with its latest funding round in 2015 garnering the company $65 million.
