VR firm with Durham HQ raises $12M to grow streaming platform

A year after Austrian tech firm Hololight picked Durham for its U.S. headquarters, a $12 million fundraise could accelerate its growth.

Hololight COO and co-founder Susanne Haspinger says the decision to expand to Durham is already paying off.

“The U.S. market is very important for us,” she said. “We will continue to grow by demand. … As you know, finding good sales people in B2B sales is always challenging, so we keep looking for people.”

And it’s having luck in Durham, where even before the most recent raise, it had assembled a team of five at the WeWork space in One City Center. Durham’s proximity to U.S. customers, its universities, its airport (including the newly-planned flight to Frankfurt) and its livability have all helped with initial hires, Haspinger said.

“It’s not very hard to convince good people to go there, or they are already there,” she said of Durham.

Hololight plans to use its new funding to accelerate the development of its XR streaming platform, Hololight Hub.

According to the Hasbinger, the streaming platform allows for the hosting of VR and AR applications – which can then be streamed to mobile devices. One benefit is its technology is on the server  – ensuring businesses can avoid cybersecurity issues coming from  multiple devices.

The funding round was led by European growth equity investor Flatz Hoffman, as well as existing investors EnBW New Ventures, Byern Kapital and Future Energy Ventures.

The round follows a 2021 Series A and brings the company’s total investment haul to $27 million.

Hololight was founded in 2015 by Florian Haspinger, Alexander Werlberger, Susanne Haspinger and Luis Bollinger.

According to the firm, it now serves more than 150 customers including BMW and Nokia.

Helmut Gulde, the firm’s chief corporate development officer, described the company's technology last year as helping the metaverse move beyond the buzz and into reality.

“All of these ideas of metaverse will stay theory if you cannot break through the limitations of mobile devices, the technical limitations in terms of computing power, and that is the technology we are bringing to the table with streaming," he said in May of 2022.