British Patient Capital has participated in Ultraleap’s Series D funding round which has closed at GBP60 million.
The deal is one of the first investments from Future Fund: Breakthrough, a GBP375 million programme where British Patient Capital co-invests with private sector investors in later stage R&D-intensive UK companies.
Ultraleap’s hand tracking and mid-air haptic technologies allow users to engage with the digital world without touching surfaces, removing the need for touchscreens, controllers or keypads. The new funding will allow Ultraleap to continue to bring its machine-learning-based hand tracking software, Gemini, to more operating systems, and increase investment in tooling, to enable developers to build more applications with touch free interfaces. Ultraleap will also continue to invest in R&D in their mid-air haptics platform.
Ultraleap employs more than 150 people across the UK, Europe, North America and Asia.
Judith Hartley, CEO, British Patient Capital, says: “Future Fund: Breakthrough was established to support UK R&D intensive companies raise the patient capital they need to fuel the later stages of their growth, and in doing so, help ensure the UK is a world leader in the industries of the future. Through our investment in Ultraleap, we are supporting the development of a UK champion in the metaverse, widely regarded as the next phase of the internet. It will be exciting to see how the company progresses.”
Tom Carter, Ultraleap CEO, says: “The metaverse concept is not new to Ultraleap. It has always been our mission to remove boundaries between physical and digital worlds. The pandemic has accelerated the rise of the term as more people now understand the power of enhancing the physical world with digital elements.
“For Ultraleap, this new era is not constrained to VR headsets. Like the internet, it is a reality we will interact with in all parts of life: at home, in the office, in cars, or out in public. Our aim with this Series D raise is to accelerate the transition to the primary interface – your hands – because there are no physical controllers, buttons or touchscreens in anyone’s vision of the metaverse.”
