Why we invested in Spatial

We are excited to announce our recent investment in Spatial, which is advancing the world of augmented reality (AR) collaboration.

Tools for collaborative team communications have evolved from face to face to telegraph to phones and mostly recently onto digital mediums such as email, video conferencing, and messaging. However, what hasn’t been solved is the seamless merging of a real-life like experience with digital space.

For anyone who has tried to stay engaged using a 2-D, flat video conferencing system, you’ll know immediately what I mean. In contrast, Spatial is leading us into a truly global and immersive collaborative workspace era, one that will enable disconnected teams to build trust and work better together. With Spatial, you’ll feel as if a colleague who is physically thousands of miles away is simply right there in front of you. Mattel, Nestlé, BNP Paribas, and other Spatial customers agree.

Geographic distance and flight costs shouldn’t prevent your design and manufacturing teams from getting in sync until it’s too late. Globally distributed team members can now collaborate in virtual rooms that can ingest pictures, videos, 3D models from existing project folders or online; quickly enter, set up, customize, or tear down a virtual meeting room as needed from any headset, PC or phone, faster than what you’d be able to do in the real world. Location no longer needs to be a constraint in building great teams.

But we believe the opportunity is even bigger than simply replacing video calls or allowing for virtual collaboration. Spatial has created rich, interactive 3D environments that truly augment reality by allowing exploration that would be impossible in the physical world. In other words, Spatial is allowing for new types of machine-assisted collaboration that make reality even better than being in the same room, let alone being across distances. Over time, as glasses become lighter and better, Spatial can start supporting teams working together continuously throughout the day.

As hardware headsets become ubiquitous, more powerful, and more seamless, the value add will accrue to those who create the strongest applications on top of such distributed tools. We believe that Spatial is superbly positioned to dominate the sector of AR collaboration and we are excited to be on this journey with them!