Google acquired Alter, a 3DTech company.

Google goes Avatar, as it has bought the virtual tech company that gives avatars to its users, in a hush-hush manner, without disclosing the acquisition price.

 

Alter was backed by Twitter earlier and is an AI avatar platform. The news was confirmed by the changes that happened in the Linkedin profiles of the executives of Alter.

 

Google has confirmed the acquisition of virtual tech avatar startup Alter on late Thursday to some of the media platforms, without revealing the details of the acquisition and financials.

 

The acquisition is supposed to have happened two months ago, but wasn’t made public. Now, Jonathan Slimak, COO Alter, has updated his Linkedin profile confirming the acquisition by stating that, “Excited to share that I’m starting a new position building Avatars at Google!” Similarly, other executives of the company have also updated their Linkedin profiles confirming, working for Google. 

 

About the Startup-

Alter was actually started as Facemoji, founded on Mar 9, 2017 by Robin Raszka. It is headquartered in the Greater New York Area, US. According to the Alter website, “Alter is an open source, cross-platform [software development kit (SDK)] consisting of a real-time 3D avatar system and motion capture built from scratch for web3 interoperability and open metaverse. With Alter, developers can easily pipe avatars into their app, game or website.” The startup investors include gianyTwitter, Play Ventures, Spacecadet Ventures and 24 others, led by Ambridge Capital and Cem Kozinoglu (founder WDYT), in the latest seed funding round. The startup has managed to raise around $4.5M in a series of four funding rounds. The latest was the seed fund round in Oct last year. Some of the media reports suggest that the acquisition exercise amounts to 100 mn USD. 

 

 The future belongs to the emerging technologies like AI, ML, Blockchain, IOT and big tech companies are showering lots of attention on startups which are employing these technologies.