Imagine attending a football game or a rock concert, and instead of the entertainment being limited to the field or stage, it extends into the air all around you. A smartphone would be your portal to digital objects that correspond to physical airspace.
Rypplzz wants to bring this kind of futuristic experience to life with its geo-location technology. The company launched out of stealth on Wednesday with $3 million in pre-seed funding.
Rypplzz’s Interlife platform transforms real-life airspace into virtual engagement opportunities. The company creates the infrastructure for venues like stadiums, convention centers and other commercial venues to program digital files to precise coordinates of airspace.
For instance, during a recent partnership with Rypplzz, the musician Grimes used the tech to host an augmented reality art rave at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami. At the event, 3D images appeared suspended in the air above the stage and audience when the area was viewed through a smartphone camera.
The company claims its tech is much more accurate than standard GPS-based technologies. Whereas standard solutions operate with a precision between 10 to 20 feet of an object, Rypplzz’s solution has an accuracy within six inches of a location, the company mentioned in a release.
Along with the $3 million pre-seed, Rypplzz announced partnerships with the Tucson Convention Center, a major U.S. sports league and Cisco Sports and Media Group to provide location-based experiences at their venues. These will include things like AR-based fan experiences, precise wayfinding and traffic analytics.
The company also announced a collaboration with SkyPath security that’ll employ its tech to improve warehouse security and operations. The partnership will help Rypplzz develop infrastructure to help first responders access real-time data, ultimately increasing their response time to security issues and active events, according to the company.
Deal Box Ventures, Innovative Venture Partners and Fulcrom Investing participated in this pre-seed round. The money will be used to help Rypplzz accelerate the adoption of its geospatial mapping platform.
Going forward, Rypplzz founder and CEO Josh Pendrick sees spatial computing as the “next major evolution” in tech, likening it to the personal computer and the smartphone in a recent statement.
“We believe our technology will be instrumental in realizing the full potential of spatial computing across multiple industries,” Pendrick continued. “Our platform’s design opens the door to the next big wave of innovation that will transform the digital-physical experience.”
