Canadian AR firm Nextech has signed an agreement to buy out UK spatial computing firm ARway Ltd in a bid to enter the Metaverse market, the company announced on Tuesday.
Nextech will hire ARWAY founders Baran Korkmaz and Nikhil Sawlani to build a platform vital to creating the Metaverse via the acquired firm’s technologies.
Companies such as Unity, along with “hyper-accurate” AI-enhanced location mapping technologies, have provided ARway users with a proprietary augmented reality (AR) software development kit (SDK) in a bid to position the firm as a key architect of a ‘mini-metaverse’.
Evan Gappelberg, CEO of Nextech AR Solutions, said business cases for the Metaverse were “here to stay” and that growth opportunities were “significant”.
He explained further, stating:
“Nextech’s mini-metaverse offering will be available to brands and companies that want to create mini-metaverses based on a geolocation like museums, corporate headquarters, theme parks, sports stadiums, University Campuses and more. We can scan these spaces with ARway’s technology and drop in AR experiences that are triggered based on geolocation, making for a fully immersive Metaverse experience”
Mini-metaverses were the “first step” to improving crucial universal mapping to build the Metaverse, namely as the technology “increasingly becomes a normal part of everyday life” for users, he concluded.
ARway’s SDK Capabilities
ARway’s SDK will offer crucial mapping technologies for AR experiences requiring location-persistant techniquies for ARcore, Microsoft Azure Spatial Anchors, ARkit, and other tools.
Nextech added the SDK would work seamlessly across platforms such as Unity, Unreal, Android Studio, Xcode, and others for true spatial computing, adding the solution would also support Android, iOS, and Hololens operating systems.
The British company’s no-code platform has curated experiences such as indoor navigation, guided tours, and treasure hunts, and has worked with a portfolio of clients such as British Telecom, the City of London, Bosch, AirAsia, and HCG Hospital, among many others.
Both Nextech’s scalable solutions for AR-backed eCommerce and ARway’s cloud and 3D mapping tools will boost the strategic partnership as global firms work to assemble the endless virtual reality (VR) space.
Execs Comment on Future Of Metaverse
According to Gappelberg, the creation of the shared space would be the “most ambitious thing [Nextech] could accomplish” as an AR firm.
The Chief Executive added that the his company could potentially market mini-metaverses and offer spatial maps as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the Metaverse.
Nextech’s HoloX content creator platform would allow the firm to boost its standing in the Metaverse with scaled content, he added.
Baran Korkmaz, Chief Executive and Co-founder of ARway, added the partnership was a “historic moment” in developing the emerging technology, adding merging understanding between humans and machines by connecting digital and real worlds would provide deeper, meaningful connections.
He added:
“And this vision is now becoming a reality with our new family at Nextech. As the future of augmented reality is inevitable, in this new age of Web 3.0, Mixed Reality and wearable cameras, it will be a large effort to map the physical world. And just like today’s web, there will be various use cases, proprietary data, walled gardens, and permission layers”
The Vancouver-based company has begun investing heavily in the AR market, namely after stating it would integrate its HoloX platform on the Microsoft HoloLens 2 for enhanced control features.
The news comes amid a race for the Metaverse after Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Chief Executive, stated in late July he wanted to shift the Menlo Park-based tech giant to a “Metaverse company”
The measures received backing from Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s Head of Reality Labs, who announced a Metaverse product group for building 3D shared spaces along with 720 new open positions.
