Designer of Oculus Rift’s chip lands $7m in series A funding

Eys3D Microelectronics, a Taipei-based fabless design house that focuses on computer vision technology, has raised US$7 million in a series A round from ARM IoT Capital, WI Harper Group, and Japan-based global distributor Marubun Corporation.

The new funds will be used for Eys3D’s product development, staff expansion, and marketing. It will also allow the startup to grow its new product for AI-based autonomous operations, which covers robotics, security, touchless control, self-driving vehicles, and smart retail.

Eys3D was spun off from Etron, a fabless integrated circuit design (IC) firm, in 2016. It tries to tackle the 3D and machine vision market, which is expected to double from US$1.35 billion in 2020 to US$2.65 billion in 2027.

The company combines silicon design and algorithm to manage information from differing sensor sources, including thermal, active 3D sensing, and neural network perception. It enables applications that can take advantage of visual simultaneous location and mapping (VSLAM), object feature depth recognition, and gesture-based commands.

Eys3D has sold millions of ICs and other sensory products, including the ones that were used in Facebook Oculus Rift S, Valve Index VR headsets, Techman Robotics, and several cleaning robots.