Supermedium, the team behind the eponymous VR web browser released earlier this year, recently raised a seed investment round of $1.1 million.
As reported by Tech Crunch, funding comes from Y Combinator, General Catalyst, Boost VC, Anorak Ventures, Candela Partners, Social Starts, M Ventures, Seraph Group, Taimatsu, Outpost VC, Colopl Next, Shrug VC, Andrew Ogawa, and Cantos VC.
Supermedium is a VR web browser from the creators of VR web framework ‘A-Frame’ and part of the original Mozilla team behind the WebVR initiative.
Unlike traditional web browsers, Supermedium serves up actual VR content to headsets, which is hosted on the web. Things like mini-games, music experiences, 3D models and other ‘lighter’ VR content types are the perfect candidates for now, but the makers behind Supermedium see a VR-first web in the future that will effectively render app stores a thing of the past in many cases.
To help this along, the team recently released Supercraft, a VR content creation tool built with A-Frame that lets you make a VR web page and then share it with a simple URL.
For now, Supermedium only supports Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, with versions obtainable via Steam and the Oculus Store, which does limit its potential install base somewhat. According to the Tech Crunch report however, the team sees the near-term focus on PC VR headsets more of a question of obtaining the best quality experience for the user, which necessarily includes tracked controllers, something that’s poised to make its way to mobile devices hopefully in the near future with headsets such as Oculus’ Santa Cruz 6DOF headset prototype.