Augmented Reality Growth Fueled by Chinese Investments
One of the new realities of augmented reality is this: the technology is attracting more investment from China than from sources in North America. This trend happens as activity around AR heats up, with major players in the digital economy apparently positioning themselves to profit as the retail-friendly tech move every closer to mainstream popularity.According Digi-Capital, which tracks AR investments, China-based funding for augmented reality and computer vision technologies hit $3.9 billion over the last 12 months, surging ahead of North American investment.
There was no immediate apples-to-apples comparison for North America, but the company’s managing director, Tim Merel, wrote that “North American augmented and virtual reality investment fell from nearly $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017 to less than $120 million in the third quarter of 2018. At the same time, VC sentiment on virtual reality softened significantly.”
Investment Shift
The numbers describing those investments came about 10 months after Digi-Capital identified what Merel called “a fundamental shift from early stage North American (virtual reality) investment to later-stage Chinese computer vision/AR investment.
See the full story here: https://www.pymnts.com/innovation/2018/augmented-reality-chinese-investment-computer-vision-technology/