Polycam, an app that uses smartphone sensors to capture 3D scans of objects, has raised funding from high-profile investors including Adobe and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley.
Polycam today announced that it has closed an $18 million Series A round led by Left Lane Capital with participation from Adobe Ventures, Hurley and others. Polycam co-founder and CEO Chris Heinrich said the capital will support new 3D editing and collaboration capabilities, training AI models to render 3D objects, and new market expansion.
Polycam was founded in early 2021 by Heinrich and Elliot Spellman, who met while working together at Ubiquity6, a startup developing mobile 3D scanning and AR technology. Both Heinrich and Spellman believe that hardware such as his LIDAR sensor in his latest iPhone will allow him to capture 3D, making it possible to create 3D content for the masses. I did.
“One of the challenges and opportunities in the 3D modeling space is that the core technology of 3D capture is far from perfect and is not as simple as taking a photo with an iPhone,” Heinrich told TechCrunch in an email interview. “The good news is that AI-driven advances in 3D capture, combined with the types of data Polycam has in abundance, will dramatically improve quality and usability over the next few years, making it more usable. That means more cases, more hiring.”
Polycam offers a suite of 3D capture and modeling tools designed to address a variety of use cases.
Image credits: polycam
On an iPhone with a LiDAR sensor, Polycam can scan your surroundings in 3D, such as a room in your home. The app's “Photomode”, available on mobile devices and the web, utilizes photogrammetry (capturing images and stitching them together) to create his 3D models of objects. Polycam can capture “Photo Sphere” and 360 degree skybox images from your smartphone camera. And for users looking to incorporate models into their projects (video games, etc.) without capturing them, this app hosts a library of free his 3D models shared by the Polycam community.
Polycam makes money by charging a $100 annual subscription for advanced features for professional users.
There are currently many apps on the market for smartphone-based 3D object capture. (See Luma for one example.) However, Polycam has benefited from market consolidation in recent years, including Niantic acquiring Scaniverse, Discord acquiring Ubiquity6, and Snap acquiring Th3rd. It is true that it has happened.
Heinrich said Polycam currently has nearly 100,000 paying customers and its iPhone and Android apps have been downloaded more than 10 million times.
“Polycam has been cash flow positive for many months in 2023 and has experienced strong revenue growth,” he added. “The company has not been noticeably affected by the slowdown in the high-tech industry and has achieved strong revenue growth despite a difficult macroeconomic environment.”
So why raise external capital? Heinrich is launching an enterprise subscription tier through new AI-powered capabilities to “grow the business more aggressively,” and to expand his workforce by 2025. The plan included doubling the number of employees to 22 people.
Image credits: polycam
To that end, Polycam is expanding into Apple's AR headset, Vision Pro, which Heinrich says will be a key area of focus for the company in the coming months. Polycam is also training his AI models to fill in gaps missed in the 3D object scanning process, and Heinrich says this investment will improve the overall fidelity of Polycam's scans. It means.
“Even the best scans can have bad and incomplete data, such as not being able to scan the underside of a couch or car,” he said. “This is where AI comes in.”