HaptX, the company building VR gloves with advanced haptics, this week announced that is has raised $12 million in a Series A-1 investment which will be used to open a new headquarters based in Redmond, WA, and expand its team.
HaptX is building perhaps the most advanced haptic VR glove to date, offering one of the most convincing experiences of touching the virtual world. The bulky, high-end gloves are primarily aimed at novel enterprise, training, and simulation use-cases.
This week the company announced it has raised $12 million in new funding in a Series A-1 investment round, bringing the company’s total capital raise to $31 million.
The round largely (if not completely) consists of capital from existing HaptX investors: Verizon Ventures, Mason Avenue Investments, Taylor Frigon Capital Partners, and Upheaval Investments.
Along with the new funding, HaptX says it’s opening a new 15,000 square-foot headquarters in Redmond, WA, growing its existing San Luis Obispo, CA office by 50%, and over the next 12 months hiring “dozens of new positions across all areas of the company.”
Earlier this year the company launched its new and improved HaptX DK2 VR glove with improvements to haptics, force-feedback, size, comfort, and manufacturability. The latest version is said to apply up to 40 pounds of force-feedback per hand, along with better stiffness and lower latency. At the same time, the DK2’s magnetic finger-tracking tech has been shrunk down from two external boxes to a small board which is built directly into the gloves.
With the new funding announced this week, the company says it will be manufacturing a second run of the DK2, with the first run purportedly selling out within six months—not bad for a glove with a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars per unit.