Talespin gets $15 million and a new outlet for its VR training products
Virtual and augmented reality corporate trainer Talespin has raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Cornerstone OnDemand, a provider of cloud-based human capital management and training software.
Talespin is going after the growing market for extended reality for enabling immersive training. Extended reality (XR) systems are a blend of digital overlays over reality and virtual reality spun by artificial intelligence, delivered with wearables and delivered through edge compute systems.
The funding, which adds to a $5 million series A, is earmarked for further develop Runway, the startup’s enterprise XR software platform. It also be used to build out Talespin’s virtual reality learning content library and to accelerate research and development in general.
Taiwanese consumer electronics giant HTC Corp. participated in the latest round as did Farmers Insurance, one of Talespin’s early customers.
Talespin and Cornerstone have also agreed to a partnership through which the pair will create human resources and learning and development content as well as new systems to deliver it for experienced professionals.
Cornerstone’s Learning Management System will carry Talespin VR content as part of the deal, and the system will be integrated with Runway.
Runway delivers virtual reality training and performance-support applications. It administers training, tracks progress, supports employee field performance and integrates extended-reality application with customers’ infrastructure.
It features Propel, a VR module for learning object- and process-based knowledge, and Co-Pilot, which trains employees on leadership and communication skills by pairing them up with role-playing virtual humans.
XR needs edge computing
Extended reality systems are expected to be big users and beneficiaries of edge computing. One of the challenges of running XR content is the high compute power and low network latency requirements. Programming applications and content for different device characteristics remains a roadblock to widespread adoption of XR tech for training and other enterprise uses, which is why some edge platform providers are aiming to make programming easier for tech providers.
MobiledgeX, an edge computing PaaS vendor founded by Deutsche Telekom AG, created an online tool to calculate edge use cases, and extended-reality hardware ranks No. 4. Latency critical compute and heavy I/O are the top factors behind demand for edge, according to MobiledgeX.
The tool also calculates a market score for use cases. This score is based on market opportunity and time to market.
Extended reality hardware scored an 83 for edge and 86 for market. Only multiplayer gaming (No. 1), cloud gaming (No. 2) and manufacturing analytics and management outranked AR/VR hardware.
Article Topics
AR/VR | artificial intelligence | edge computing | HTC Corp | Talespin
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