While much of augmented reality company Magic Leap’s work remains a mystery, some of its former employees are taking big leaps of their own.
Torch 3D, an AR and VR development platform, was founded by Paul Reynolds and Josh Faust, who previously worked on SDK and Applications at Magic Leap, along with veteran cloud and infrastructure entrepreneur Antony Falco. Today the team announced that it had raised from $3.5 million in a seed round of funding.
The round was led by The Venture Reality Fund and Silicon Valley Data Capital and included additional investment from Seven Peaks Ventures, GVR Fund, Presence Capital, Antipodean Ventures, Jerome Capital, and TWB Investment Partnership.
The company is currently working on a prototyping platform that makes developing VR and AR content more accessible. It claims that designers can start creating content with no prior knowledge of videogame development and allows for easy collaboration with others. This is a key area that developers are exploring with the two technologies at the moment, democratizing content creation so that anyone can make virtual worlds and objects.
Torch 3D intends to use the money raised to expand its team. Currently the company is reviewing applications to take part in the platform’s Early Access beta, with a more open release expected in early 2018.
