A firm which claims to have developed the world’s first “engineering grade” headset which allows construction workers to view Building Information Models on site to 5mm accuracy, has been boosted by a £5m injection.
XYZ Reality, which uses augmented reality software for construction programming, has raised £5m of private equity funding to help drive its development plans.
The financial injection – from Amadeus Capital Partners and Hoxton Ventures, with participation from Adara Ventures and J Coffey Construction – is a vote of confidence in the company which has developed the augmented reality headset HoloSite.
XYZ Reality’s HoloSite tackles the problem of inaccuracy which arises when buildings are designed in 3D and then converted into 2D drawings. It solves this by improving the feedback loop between site and design by 92%.
XYZ founder, CEO and builder David Mitchell, said: “2D is an unnatural language for humans; we see everything in 3D, yet tradespeople are being asked to interpret 2D drawings, conceptualise the 3D asset and then build the asset onsite to within construction ‘tolerances’. Works are currently validated after the fact through laser scanning. 80% of the time the construction fails to meet acceptable tolerances. With HoloSite, we can prevent errors happening in the first place.”
The new funding will enable the company to further improve the user experience by doubling the size of the technology team, expand its development team across all verticals and build its sales and marketing operation.
Nick Kingsbury, partner at Amadeus Capital Partners, said: “Construction is a sector that’s ripe for radical innovation. This technology has the potential to revolutionise how the construction industry sets out and validates its work, reducing costs and the chance of project slippage from mistakes.
“The funding from Amadeus and Hoxton Ventures will enable XYZ Reality to develop its AR cloud and software platform, build its team to serve the EU market and expand to US and Asia, where it has received significant interest.”
