Month: July 2021

RNS Number : 8202D | Sure Ventures PLC | 01 July 2021

VividQ announces £11 million seed extension round

Sure Ventures PLC is a London listed venture capital fund which invests in early stage software companies in the rapidly growing technology areas of Augmented reality (‘AR’), Virtual reality (‘VR’), Internet of Things (‘IoT’) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Sure Ventures PLC has a both a direct investment of £500K and 25.9% exposure to Sure Valley Ventures holding in VividQ and represents its largest investment by weighting.

Deep technology company VividQ has announced this morning a seed extension round of £11 million, which will be used to scale the team, expand in Asia Pacific US and further product development. This product development includes HoloLCD, which turns consumer-grade screens into holographic displays.  This new investment round has taken place at a significantly higher valuation compared to the valuation at which the initial investment was made by Sure valley Ventures and Sure Ventures PLC.

The Cambridge head-quartered business is powering the display revolution with Computer-Generated Holography and has secured over £17 million in funding to date. Its technology is used in the development of next-generation digital displays and devices by manufacturers in the US, China and Japan.

The latest investment was led by UTokyo IPC, the venture investment arm for the University of Tokyo, who are joined by Foresight Williams Technology (a joint collaboration between Foresight Group and Williams Advanced Engineering), Japanese Miyako Capital, Austrian APEX Ventures, and Silicon Valley’s R42 Group. Previous investors University of Tokyo Edge Capital, Sure Valley Ventures, and Essex Innovations also participated.

Founded in 2017, VividQ has made cutting-edge developments that achieve real-time Computer-Generated Holography with high image quality, at low power. The company collaborates with key providers to bring this technology to everyday applications. VividQ has worked with Arm, demonstrating mobile holographic display for the first time, and other partners include Compound Photonics, Himax Technologies, and iView Displays.

The funding round will further advance the adoption of VividQ’s solutions for Computer-Generated Holography across three applications; in automotive head-up displays (“HUD”), augmented reality (“AR”) wearables, and bringing holography to consumer electronics, with holographic LCD screens.

Gareth Burchell (Director Comment):

” VividQ has an amazing team of founders, that really are developing a cutting edge technology that may well  transform how we view digital content in the future. Holography is a field that used to generate images of Sc-Fi films or superhero movies, but as a technology it is developing at a pace that will make such imaging a reality. The type of Institutional investors that have supported the round validates the deep technology at play here and the partners that the company are working with are truly global leaders in various Industries. Congratulations to VividQ on what really is excellent news for Sure ventures shareholders”

For further information, please visit www.sureventuresplc.com or contact: