Virtual experience startup Touchcast raised $55 million in a series A funding round led by Accenture Ventures, Alexander Capital Ventures, Saatchi Invest, Ronald Lauder and others.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated the need to reimagine the way we meet, connect and collaborate with each other,” Touchcast Founder and CEO Edo Segal said in a Wednesday (Feb. 3) press release.
He said Touchcast taps artificial intelligence (AI) and mixed-reality for a “virtual event platform” that reimagines how “knowledge is created and shared across space and time” to offer an “immersive and interactive experience.”
The funding will be used to scale Touchast’s virtual events platform, which uses AI and mixed reality to reimagine the way organizations communicate and collaborate. The global market for virtual events is expected to exceed $400 billion by 2027, the company said.
“Digital disruption, distributed workforces, and customer experience are the driving forces behind the need for companies to transform how they do business and move toward the future of work,” said Tom Lounibos, managing director at Accenture Ventures.
He added that the COVID-19 pandemic has made it evident that “quality interactions and insights” make all the difference for businesses needing to deliver impact via virtual experience.
“Our investment in Touchcast demonstrates our commitment to identifying the latest technologies that help address our clients’ critical business needs,” Lounibos said.
Touchcast’s technology offers a virtual platform that is interactive rather than just a static video experience. The platform enables attendees to connect as if they were at an event in person. By extending a combination of AI and mixed-reality, Touchcast enables real-time knowledge-sharing and collaboration, the company said.
Some of the features include live transcription and translation, which gives those in attendance the ability to “capture and synthesize their collective intelligence.” The platform has an “intuitive design” that breaks down language, time and distance barriers and makes everything easily found for future reference.
The business events industry is estimated at $1.5 trillion, with direct spending in local economies at about $1 trillion. The pandemic caused numerous in-person cancellations of marquee events like Mobile World Congress. Business travel was off some 85 percent, year on year, by November 2020.
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