Unity Technologies, the company that provides the platform behind Pokemon GO, raises $181m
Gaming platform provider Unity Technologies, Inc., the company that provided the engine that powers the insanely popular augmented reality game Pokemon GO, has raised $181 million Series C in a round led by DFJ Growth that included China Investment Corporation, FreeS Fund, Thrive Capital, and Max Levchin.
According to The New York Times, the round was raised at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
Founded way back in 2004, Unity offers a flexible, high-performance end-to-end development platform used to create rich interactive 2D, 3D, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences.
The company’s platform provides a powerful graphics engine and full-featured editor that serves as a foundation to develop beautiful games or apps and can then be used to bring them to multiple platforms including mobile devices, home entertainment systems, personal computers, and embedded systems.
In addition, Unity also offers solutions and services for creating games, boosting productivity, and connecting with audiences.
Although far from being a well-known name, the chances are that most people would have interacted with apps and games built on its technology.
Based in San Francisco, Unity has 1,000 employees globally and offers support to games and experiences on over 25 different platforms across 2D, 3D, VR and AR; the company claims that 31 percent of the top 1,000 grossing mobile games globally, including Perchang, Sky Force Reloaded, INKS and Pokemon Go are made with Unity.
Ninety percent of content on Samsung Electronic Co. Ltd’s Gear VR headset is made with Unity’s platform, including a wide range of titles on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
“Unity’s platform has revolutionized the game industry by allowing any size studio from Indie to Triple-A to create beautiful and compelling games and experiences and monetize them with their advertising and analytics services,” DFJ Growth Partner Barry Schuler said in a statement. “Now Unity is poised to accelerate the advance of AR/VR with their unique ‘write once/ publish many’ engine which allows studios to easily support all hardware platforms without having to attempt to choose a winner.”
Staggering
The aforementioned numbers are amazing in themselves, but they get even bigger: Unity claims to own more than 45 percent of the full feature game engine market and there are more that 5 million registered Unity developers globally, staggering numbers by any stretch of the imagination.
Including the new round, Unity has raised at least $198.5 million to date (the amount of a round in April 2014 was not disclosed). Previous investors include Sequoia Capital and WestSummit Capital.
Image credit: edowoo/Flickr/CC by 2.0
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