HaptX, a producer of haptic VR gloves, today announced it’s secured $12 million in its Series A financing round. The company has additionally signed a strategic partnership with Advanced Input Systems, which the companies say will include shared product development, manufacturing, and go-to-market collaboration.
The series A financing brings the company’s total funding to $19 million. The round included participation from existing investors NetEase and Amit Kapur of Dawn Patrol Ventures, and was joined by new investors Mason Avenue Investments, Taylor Frigon Capital Partners, Upheaval Investments, Votiv Capital, Keiretsu Forum and Keiretsu Capital.
Founded in 2012 (then known as AxonVR), HaptX has been focused on creating haptic gloves for use in VR, training, and robotics. The company has impressed with its HaptX Gloves developer kit, which Road to VR’s Ben Lang called in late 2018 “the most detailed and convincing haptics and force feedback that I’ve tried to date.”
HaptX says the financing will fund the production of the next generation of HaptX Gloves.
“Over the past year, we’ve had dozens of world-class companies successfully pilot our HaptX Gloves Development Kit,” said Jake Rubin, founder and CEO of HaptX. “With this foundational strategic partnership and fresh capital, we’re well positioned to scale up production to meet rapidly growing demand.”
HaptX has previously worked with companies such as Nissan to bring touch to the its virtual vehicle prototypes, Fundamental Surgery to support its gloves in the company’s VR medical training platform, and All Nippon Airways, Tangible Research, and Shadow Robot Company to integrate HaptX into a telepresence robot.
Jeff Bezos also apparently thought the experience was pretty compelling too, as it called it “really impressive” in a recent demo:
“HaptX and Advanced Input Systems are overcoming a long-standing technology gap of seamlessly connecting the physical world to the virtual world,” said Eric Ballew, president of Advanced Input Systems. “The ability of the HaptX solution to provide realistic touch feedback in wearable haptic devices bridges this gap, accelerating the adoption of VR products in enterprise applications.”
Advanced Input Systems has a 40-year history in engineering and manufacturing human-machine-interfaces, which stands to help HaptX navigate to a more public-facing device with finer haptics, better force feedback, and a price they can actually publish; HaptX only offers its gloves currently to vetted companies.
HaptX will be showing off its latest work in haptics at CES in January 2020. We’ll have feet on the ground in Las Vegas, so check back soon for all things AR/VR to come from one of the biggest consumer tech trade shows in the world.