8i Announces $27 Million Series B Funding to Bring Holograms to Consumers with New Mixed Reality App “Holo”

New round led by Time Warner Investments backs 8i’s mission to enable
the evolution of media and give people the best way to connect and
express themselves with holograms

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–8i, a company that develops holographic technology for virtual and
augmented reality, today announced a US$27 million Series B round of
funding to support the launch of its new mixed reality app Holo in 2017.
The new round, which brings 8i’s total funding to $41 million, was led
by Time Warner Investments, with participation from Baidu Ventures,
Hearst Ventures, Verizon Ventures, One Ventures, Carsten Maschmeyer’s
Seed & Speed Ventures, and existing investors. This is the first
investment in VR/AR for Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU)
through its recently formed fund, Baidu Ventures. Time Warner
Investments Managing Director Scott Levine joins 8i’s board.

Today, at the Code Media conference in Dana Point, Calif., 8i will
introduce Holo, a consumer mobile app that gives people an easy way to
create mixed reality content with holograms of their favorite
celebrities, brands, and characters. Holo lets users add holograms to
their real-world environments and take videos and photos they can share
with friends across their social channels and messaging apps. The app
provides an innovative way for influencers across entertainment, music,
and sports to reach and engage their audiences, and drive a new form of
user generated content around their brand.

“As consumers are augmenting, mixing and creating new content on their
smartphones on a massive scale, mobile presents an unparalleled
opportunity for distribution of holograms,” said 8i CEO Steve Raymond.
“We’re thrilled to have the strategic expertise and backing of leaders
in media, technology, and communications as we bring audiences new ways
to create and engage with content. With this global round, we look
forward to partnering with our investors from the US, China, Europe, and
Australia as we bring our technology to consumers worldwide.”

“With VR and AR, we’re seeing the very beginning of a new generation of
immersive media,” said Scott Levine of Time Warner Investments. “8i
makes holographic human content a reality in this new era with its
breakthrough volumetric capture technology, while lowering the barrier
for creators. We’re excited to back this world-class team as they
continue to push the boundaries of data compression and depth
acquisition, and bring holograms to the mainstream with Holo on
smartphones.”

“We are excited to back the extraordinary team at 8i and help bring its
superior holographic experience to mass audiences in China,” said Daisy
Cai, managing partner at Baidu Ventures. “At Baidu, we envision a future
where VR and AR can be applied in numerous industries that serve our
more than one billion monthly active users.”

Holo currently in beta, launching in 2017

8i is testing an early beta version of Holo on the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro
powered by Tango,
an augmented reality technology from Google. As part of the beta, 8i is
testing how users interact with the new technology and a limited
selection of sample 3D holograms. The company plans to officially launch
a new version of the app with content partners and programming later
this year on Tango-enabled smartphones, and other mobile devices.

8i Studios partner program enables human-driven VR and AR

8i develops technology that provides an easy way to record, create and
experience human holograms that look real and feel as if they were in
the same room. Through its 8i Studios partner program, 8i enables
human-driven VR and AR projects from third party creators. Partners
record a human performance using an array of cameras through an approach
called volumetric capture. The company’s proprietary technology
transforms the video into a photorealistic 3D hologram, which can be
easily integrated into VR/AR experiences for any device using 8i’s
plugin for Unity. 8i rolled out the program in April 2016, and has
signed more than 100 partners to date.

“As we deliver on our long term vision of enabling the evolution of
media and human communication, we’re inspired to help our partners bring
their own vision to life,” said Raymond. “One of these projects is a
groundbreaking virtual reality experience 8i created with Buzz
Aldrin and our incredible partners at Time Inc. and Soylent, which
we’re excited to premiere at the SXSW:Film
festival in March.”

8i’s team brings decades of experience from Weta Digital, YouTube,
NVIDIA, Google, Valve, Microsoft Research, PayPal, Sony Computer
Entertainment, DreamWorks, Pixar, Bell Laboratories, Viacom, Xero,
Twitter, Yahoo!, and Zynga. Existing investors in 8i include RRE
Ventures, Founders Fund Science, Horizons Ventures, Samsung Ventures,
Dolby Family Ventures, Signia Ventures Partners, Bertelsmann Digital
Media Investments, Sound Ventures (Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary),
Inevitable Ventures, Freelands and Advancit Capital. Advisors include
Kevin Wall (Control Room), Sam Wick (UTA), Ted Schilowitz (20th Century
Fox), and Joshua Feast (Cogito).

For more information visit: http://8i.com/
and http://8i.com/holo.

For Holo video visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj9RwWP61MY

For images visit: http://bit.ly/2lpKL6C

About 8i

8i’s mission is to enable the evolution of media and human communication
by giving people the best way to connect with each other and express
themselves through holograms. We provide the easiest way to create, mix
and experience 3D human holograms that look real, and can be viewed from
any angle, on any device for virtual, augmented or mixed reality.
Founded in May 2014, 8i is based in Wellington, New Zealand, and Los
Angeles. Learn more at http://8i.com/.

About Time Warner Inc.

Time
Warner Inc., a global leader in media and entertainment with
businesses in television networks and film and TV entertainment, uses
its industry-leading operating scale and brands to create, package and
deliver high-quality content worldwide on a multi-platform basis.

About Baidu Ventures L.P.

Baidu Ventures is the newly-formed venture capital investment arm of
Baidu, Inc., the leading Chinese language Internet search provider. The
first fund is USD$200 million, dedicated to investing in early-stage
companies in the artificial intelligence (AI), AR and VR space. Led by
seasoned investment professionals and former entrepreneurs, Baidu
Ventures backs founders of next-generation technologies and invests
globally from offices in Beijing and Sunnyvale, California.

Contacts

Press:
Amy Sezak, 8i
press@8i.com
or
Anne
Marie Damron, Time Warner
anne.marie.damron@timewarner.com
or
Ivy
Zhang, Baidu Ventures
zhangqian36@baidu.com