PIXO VR Raises $6.5M Round, Led By Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV) and Announces New Tech & Product Leadership

Original Post Appearing on pixovr.com

ROYAL OAK, Mich. — Enterprise extended reality (XR) solutions provider, PIXO VR, which launched its platform for delivery of VR/AR workplace training content, PIXO Apex™, in 2020, has announced $6.5 million in funding. This investment, which will fuel the next phase of growth for the company, was led by Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV), the corporate venturing subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, along with Peter Karmanos Jr., co-founder and former CEO of Compuware Corporation, and others.

“This injection of capital allows us to continue to improve our first-of-its-kind platform,” said PIXO Founder and CEO Sean Hurwitz. “We believe virtual reality provides more immersive, interactive, and meaningful experiences, and with PIXO, it has never been easier for organizations to leverage this technology to train employees.”

Companies like Saudi Aramco and Chick-fil-A are partnering with PIXO for its enterprise-compliant platform, Apex; a true all-in-one solution for management and delivery of VR/AR training content. PIXO Apex helps seamlessly integrate XR training, from initial adoption to scaling across an entire organization. Apex works on any headset and integrates with any Learning Management System (LMS) to provide a holistic view of training program performance, making it as simple as possible to launch a pilot and prove ROI prior to full scale adoption.

Apex is also the only XR platform that is an open system. With Apex, integration with other XR solutions is possible; a huge benefit for organizations looking to scale their XR training.

According to Hurwitz, PIXO saw the need to provide both their customers and partners a significant competitive advantage with this type of XR ecosystem, and built Apex around that need.

“We knew six years ago (a lifetime in this industry) that big companies would never use a dozen different solutions, each with their own exclusive use case, to adopt XR,” Hurwitz said. “When creating products with the end user in mind, it’s been clear to us that an all-in-one platform is what the market needs. It’s just what’s best for the customer.”

With customer focus in mind, PIXO, which recently was featured in The Silicon Review as one of the 50 fastest growing companies of 2022, has invested in its leadership team. “Adding strong leadership in technology, product and content is key to giving customers the tools they need to adopt and scale VR training,” Hurwitz said. PIXO’s newest leadership members include: VP of Content Brian Draper, VP of Product Leo Alsufi, and VP of Technology Michael Drzewiecki.

PwC economists predict VR and AR have the potential to boost the global economy by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, with one fifth of that ($294 billion) coming in the form of VR/AR training. PIXO is poised to capitalize on the market with a unique solution and overall approach to the industry.

One of PIXO’s earliest customers, Saudi Aramco began using VR training through PIXO’s platform in 2020. After two years of partnership, Saudi Aramco’s strategic technology venturing program, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV), has become the lead investor in this round of funding for PIXO.

“We have been partners with PIXO since 2020, and have seen first hand the various benefits immersive training experiences can provide organizations,” said Anupam Singh, Investment Director for SAEV. “We anticipate tremendous future growth in the XR industry, and PIXO is in a great position to capitalize on that with their unique all-in-one platform.”

About PIXO VR

PIXO offers a complete, end-to-end, extended reality (XR) solution for enterprise. With PIXO’s cloud-based system, organizations can deploy, use, and scale XR content globally across thousands of users and devices. Headquartered in Royal Oak, Michigan, the PIXO mission is to unlock human potential and improve lives through the power of emerging technology.

About Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures

Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures LLC (SAEV) is the corporate venture fund of Aramco Ventures, the Venture Capital subsidiary of Aramco, the world’s leading fully integrated energy and chemical enterprise. Headquartered in Dhahran with offices in North America, Europe and Asia, SAEV’s mission is to invest globally in startup and high growth companies with technologies of strategic importance to its parent company. For more information, visit www.saev.com.

About Peter Karmanos Jr.

Peter Karmanos Jr. is current Chairman at Maddog Professional Services, a high-tech venture capital firm. Karmanos is co-founder and former CEO and Chairman of Enterprise for software and IT giant, Compuware Corporation. Karmanos is also former owner of the Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2015.

Tags: PIXO, PIXO Apex, SAEV, virtual reality, virtual reality training, VR, VR training

XR Made Simple: PIXO Launches Groundbreaking Platform for VR, AR, MR

Extended Reality (XR) Solutions Provider Streamlines XR Implementation with New ‘PIXO Apex’ Platform

ROYAL OAK, Mich. — Extended reality (XR) solutions company, PIXO, which recently made news with its VR Training collaboration with global engineering firm Bosch and Big Three automaker Ford Motor Company, has announced the launch of ‘PIXO Apex’, a first-of-its-kind XR content distribution, management, and analytics platform designed to make XR easier than ever for enterprise clients and other major organizations to deploy, use, and scale. Critically, this new platform stands apart from other solutions with its ability to manage all three XR technologies, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) applications, with a single, cloud-based system. 

Fortune magazine recently estimated the XR industry will grow to $250 billion by 2026, particularly in light of the need for more remote and virtual work, collaboration, and training solutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But that rapid growth has created its own challenges, said PIXO Founder and CEO Sean Hurwitz.  “PIXO Apex solves issues around content, hardware, and distribution on a global scale which have, up until now, held the industry back from reaching its full potential,” Hurwitz said, referencing common implementation hurdles he’s witnessed since his company first started developing virtual reality training solutions for business in 2016.  

“Enterprise VR Training is an important space for us and why we invested in PIXO last year,” said Angelo Del Priore, partner at HP Tech Ventures, the venture capital arm of HP Inc. “In PIXO, we see a company delivering compelling XR solutions to customers across industries like construction, manufacturing, energy, and public safety.”

Hurwitz said the beauty of his company’s new platform is its simplicity, flexibility, and ease of use. With PIXO Apex, organizations that need content can access a growing library of VR, AR, and MR titles, license what they want, then provision that content to a wide variety of popular XR headsets, including models from HP, Oculus, HTC, and Pico, as well as non-XR digital devices. Organizations who already have content, developed internally or by third parties, can also distribute and manage it simply by integrating those titles with the PIXO Apex platform’s web-based API.

Perhaps even more exciting for the XR industry is what happens on the user end. Once VR, AR, or MR titles are provisioned to devices, authenticated users can securely download experiences to tethered, head-mounted displays (HMDs) or directly to tetherless, standalone headsets without the need to individually sideload content. SCORM-compliant data, session duration, and other user metrics can be viewed in real-time on an organization’s reporting dashboard, and can be integrated into a company’s existing learning management system, (LMS).

By offering content, distribution, and management, PIXO Apex represents a complete, end-to-end, XR solution, offered on a monthly subscription basis. Further, third party XR developers can partner with PIXO to license and distribute their own content, and affiliates and associations can offer their members easy access to a library of curated, immersive learning experiences, particularly for industries where on-site, instructor-led training is often too difficult, dangerous, or expensive to conduct, particularly with the added complications of a post-COVID world. 

“Apex makes XR for training, design, collaboration, and endless other uses more affordable and accessible to companies, developers, associations and resellers, helping to grow the industry,” Hurwitz said. “XR provides more immersive, interactive, and meaningful experiences for everyone, especially those now entering the workforce, who have grown up along with this technology through gaming and entertainment. PIXO Apex is XR for the entire world.”

Please join the PIXO team at the VR/AR Global Summit, Sept. 16-18.  For more information, visit pixovr.com. 

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About PIXO

PIXO offers a complete, end-to-end, extended reality (XR) solution for enterprise. Our proprietary, patent-pending content distribution, management, and analytics platform makes XR — including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) applications — easier to manage than ever before. With one cloud-based system, organizations can deploy, use, and scale XR content across potentially numerous global endpoints and thousands of users and devices. Headquartered in Royal Oak, Michigan, the PIXO mission is to unlock human potential and improve lives through the power of emerging technology. For more information, please visit www.pixovr.com, Like PIXO on Facebook, and follow on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Media Contact for PIXO:

Jo Bourjaily248.766.5765; jb@virgogroup.net

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