Fove is today announcing that the company has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Samsung Ventures to further their eye-tracking VR headset, and additionally firms up their commitment to support Valve’s Lighthouse positional tracking technology.
Having now raised 180% of their $250,000 Kickstarter goal (with eight days still to go), the Japan-based Fove says that they’ve received funding from Samsung Ventures, the company’s Korean-based investment arm which funds Semiconductor, IT, Software, Internet Service, Content, and Biotech businesses, among others. Fove nor Samsung Ventures specified the amount of the investment or into which Series it falls.
Samsung Ventures joins Microsoft Ventures London Accelerator and Rothenberg Ventures as investors in the company.
“Our investment in FOVE is evidence of our belief in FOVE’s superior technology and we believe FOVE will launch a competitive VR device in the market soon,” said Samsung Ventures.
While Fove set tentative exploration of Lighthouse positional tracking as their $700,000 crowdfunding stretch goal, the company says that the Samsung Ventures investment ensures support for the technology, including the OpenVR API, which will allow the headset to support SteamVR games. The Fove Kickstarter still has stretch goals for a minigame and advanced gaze analysis at $500,000 and $600,000 respectively.
Fove’s headset is the first and only we’ve yet seen to include eye-tracking in a VR headset at a consumer price point. High quality eye-tracking in a VR headset could be useful for user input, foveated rendering, more accurate depth of field, and much more. The headset is promising for more than just its eye-tracking; we called it ‘Next Best’ at CES 2015. The company expects the first shipments of their headset in Spring 2016.
