Immersed Inc., a startup developing virtual reality workspaces and a VR headset, is moving forward with its plans to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company.
The Austin-based startup is set to merge with Miami-based Maquia Capital Acquisition Corp., according to a Nov. 15 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company's Nov. 8 registration statement, which could be updated before the company begins trading shares, shows Immersed is being valued at $150 million.
Maquia and Immersed boards of directors already approved the deal and expect it to be completed in early 2024, though the companies' stockholders would still need to sign off on it. It remains unclear when Immersed might be listed, but the companies have agreed to complete the deal by Feb. 7, 2024 – otherwise it could be dissolved.
Maquia's board initially agreed to merge with Immersed in August, with plans to go public on Nasdaq under the ticker "AIMR." At the time, Immersed also said it had secured $1.9 million in bridge financing from investors including All Blue Capital and Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. Before that, it had raised about $12 million through crowdfunding and investors including Sovereign’s Capital and Techstars.
Immersive, founded in 2017, plans to use money generated by the offering to further develop its spatial computing software that powers its virtual work environments.
It has also developed a lightweight VR headset called "Visor" and an AI agent called "Curator."
In the new SEC filing, Immersive disclosed that it plans to develop the headset partnership with "an AR/VR giant." On the company's site, a rendering of the visor looks similar to a pair of sunglasses and notes that they are powered by Qualcomm. The device, which will begin shipping to customers next year, is listed for sale for $1,099, though it's running a discount for $749. Immersed also plans to sell them to enterprise customers starting next year.
"I'm thrilled to be one step closer to fulfilling our public journey to help scale our leading Enterprise AI Solution, empowered by spatial computing,” Renji Bijoy, founder and CEO of Immersed, stated. “We've made extraordinary strides in the development of our AI assistant, Curator, and are excited to unveil this to the world as major tech companies have poured dozens of billions of dollars into spatial computing where Immersed is the most used enterprise application measured by the number of hours spent in the application."
Its other primary revenue stream will be app store-like subscriptions that give users access management, administrative capabilities, custom virtual office plans and mobile device management.
Immersed says it has had about 730,000 unique users to date. It reached a peak of about 87,000 monthly active users in May 2023, according to the SEC filing.
