{"id":19353,"date":"2020-12-15T09:13:47","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T05:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/?p=19353"},"modified":"2021-01-11T10:05:48","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T06:05:48","slug":"roblox-buys-digital-avatar-startup-loom-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/roblox-buys-digital-avatar-startup-loom-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Roblox buys digital avatar startup Loom.ai"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Roblox\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0announced today that it\u2019s buying a digital avatar startup called\u00a0Loom.ai<\/a>. Purchasing a company that has focused singularly on creating more realistic human avatars is an interesting play for a gaming platform<\/a> that has made such an impact by building experiences that tend to cast realism to the wayside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u00a0covered the company\u2019s $1.35 million seed round<\/a>\u00a0back in 2016. Since then, it has brought in additional seed funding, scoring $5.9 million in total capital raised. The startup\u2019s investors include Y Combinator<\/a>, Samsung Ventures, Anorak Ventures, and Zach Coelius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terms of the deal weren\u2019t disclosed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loom.ai\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0was one in a long list of avatar companies to launch during the mid 2010\u2019s that capitalized on computer vision advancements and aimed to build out a cross-game\/cross-platform network of users that relied on their tech to create in-app avatars. This field of companies aimed to capitalize on opportunities in 3D that expanded beyond what companies like Snapchat <\/a>had identified following its Bitmoji acquisition.\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image via Loom.ai<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, Loom.ai shifted its effort from photorealism to creating more Memoji-like representations that allowed users to upload a 2D photo and automatically create a realistic 3D avatar. In recent years, Loom.ai focused heavily on enterprise opportunities. The company\u2019s products also included a suite of integrations to build out personalized avatar stickers that could be used on messaging platforms like Slack<\/a> or WhatsApp<\/a> as well as live avatars that could be used during video calls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Roblox has some of the more simplistic avatars on the market, this acquisition may suggest that the company is open to building out a system that places more of a premium on realism and more life-like facial animations. In a press release announcing the deal, Roblox shared that this acquisition \u201cwill accelerate the development of next-generation avatars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roblox\u00a0\u00a0announced today that it\u2019s buying a digital avatar startup called\u00a0Loom.ai. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":19360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6201,6198,4283,6199,6197,6200,4020,1105,692,2522,3015,6202],"contributor":[],"class_list":["post-19353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other-tech-events","tag-anorak-ventures","tag-digital-avatar","tag-gaming-platforms","tag-loom-ai","tag-roblox","tag-samsung-ventures","tag-slack","tag-snapchat","tag-startup","tag-whatsapp","tag-y-combinator","tag-zach-coelius"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-14-at-1.08.19-PM.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Techx Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/author\/techxadmin\/"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19353"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=19353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}