3D asset visualisation and management platform Hexa has raised a $20.5 million Series A round. Participants in the round include Point72 Ventures, Samurai Incubate, Sarona Partners and HTC.
Hexa’s tech stack digitises products such as furniture and fashion using existing 2D images and AR to create a new 3D model digital twin of the physical object. This twin can then be deployed on websites, social media and augmented reality applications.
Models created with Hexa are interactive, with consumers being able to control the model with their cursor, this allows for greater inspection of the asset from any angle. Hexa also provides storage, management, distribution and analysis of the models customers create.
3D world
Hexa believes that the internet will increasingly become 3D as spaces such as the metaverse will need to be populated with dimensional objects, furnishing, displays and merchandise. 3D spaces mean that users can do more than simply look at things, they can navigate around them and even interact. Hexa notes that product pages will also increasingly use 3D representations, replacing traditional 2D pictures and thumbnails.
Hexa CEO and co-founder Yehiel Atias said, “We are convinced 3D content will be at the heart of all online and offline retail. You have to make it easy to use, inexpensive and fast to return on your investment. Old methods of creating assets through photogrammetry or lidar scanning are less accurate and more expensive.”
Companies like Amazon, Macy’s, Logitech and Unity use the Hexa 3D platform to create, manage and deploy 3D assets. The models can be moved onto any website or social media page or even within a game engine using code. Hexa’s 3D viewer facilitates parallel processing, loading at the maximum frame per second without sacrificing computational power. Hexa also claims that 3D models load just as quickly as 2D images and are immediately interactive.
Co-founder and CTO at Hexa, Jonathan Clark commented, “Taking a product library, converting it to 3D, inspecting it and deploying it is a tremendous undertaking. But we’ve eliminated the pain points with a fast, scalable solution to a very specific problem everyone selling anything in the metaverse is going to encounter.”
Expansion
Hexa raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding and $5.5 million in seed funding rounds, making its total funding to date $27.2 million. The company has a team of 100 global employees and is looking to utilise this new funding to support the platform’s further growth.
Others, such as Looking Glass Factory, are also working within the world of 3D and aim to bring content to consumers in life-like 3D.
Paige Cook is a writer with a multi-media background. She has experience covering video games and technology and also has freelance experience in video editing, graphic design, and photography. Paige is a massive fan of the movie industry and loves a good TV show, if she is not watching something interesting then she's probably playing video games or buried in a good book. Her latest addiction is virtual photography and currently spends far too much time taking pretty pictures in games rather than actually finishing them.
