“It was a deal that was completed very quickly,” Franz Tschimben, CEO and co-founder of Covision Media tells Startupbusiness, announcing the €5 million round that has just closed. “This is also because we are already on the market with 3D scanners and their hardware and software technologies, the factor that makes the difference is above all the software, which is also the basis for developing other products that we will soon bring to market and which integrate generative artificial intelligence trained on the basis of the many high-quality data that we collect every day. The new capital is therefore needed to develop new technologies and new products, we have a very strong AI team that we want to expand, and in this round there are also angel investors with expertise in the field, we have ambitions to extend the team based in Brixen and then extend the sales team to Europe and Asia, which is essential to create high-tech products such as 3D design tools so that customers can create their designs directly.
Covision Media, which specialises in 3D scanning and 3D AI technology, can now accelerate the expansion and global development and commercialisation of its 3D scanning technology thanks to the round, furthering its mission to automate the large-scale production of real-life quality 3D models and drive the development of new software-driven 3D AI products.
The round is led by CDP Venture Capital’s Artificial Intelligence Fund, Euregio+, Redstone and The Techshop, together with a group of entrepreneurs led by Harald Oberrauch and angel investors including the Tyrolean Business Angels Network, a heterogeneous consortium of leading national and international investors, demonstrating strong confidence in the company’s technological leadership, business model and growth potential.
“The opportunity to participate in the deal came from one of our investment associates who had worked with Redstone in Germany in the past, a fund that was investigating the investment opportunity in this Italian company, from there our interest started, then we met Franz and within a few weeks we realised the value of the company and its technology, and so we decided to proceed,’ explains Gianluca D’Agostino, managing partner of The Techshop. ‘And then I cannot hide the fact that my background in mobile commerce helped me understand that this is the evolution of what I had pioneered. This is the new frontier supported by high quality technology and the combination of hardware and software will enable Covision Media to become a global company in 3D scanning software. With the other co-investors, a good team was formed, united by the knowledge that these rounds are done in companies that, as in this case, generate revenue and with very strong validation from very important customers, so the opportunity to scale with great development potential is very clear. It is certainly an ambitious round in a company that was born at the beginning of 2024, but there is the strength of the syndication operation, a model that we like very much and that is becoming increasingly important also in Italy, as we have already done with The Techshop with Smartpricing and Shop Circle. The objective is always to support the founders in the best possible way’.
Covision Media, which Startupbusiness wrote about here, innovates in the field of 3D scanning technology by commercialising artificial intelligence-based 3D scanners that mass-produce real-life quality 3D models. The technology has been rapidly adopted by a wide range of customers as it serves a variety of use cases in different industries.
Fashion and lifestyle items such as shoes, bags and accessories are being scanned by brands and retailers to integrate 3D directly into e-commerce shops and to enable augmented and virtual reality applications such as virtual try-on. Customers such as Adidas, Inditex Group (Zara and Massimo Dutti), Gucci and Salomon, for example, were able to revolutionise their 3D production and innovate their visual content creation pipelines.
The technology is also being used by photography and content creation studios around the world, which are creating a new class of visual assets with 3D, alongside photos and videos. Customers include Quad Graphics in the US, Nureg in Germany and CLX Europe in France and Italy.
Covision Media’s scanning technology also bridges the so-called data gap in 3D machine learning. Unlike in the AI domains of text, photos and video, large, high-quality data sets are not available for training fundamental 3D AI models. Meta, for instance, is using this technology to build and launch its innovative catalogue of 3D digital twins. This is the largest database of high-quality 3D models in the world, allowing AI models to be trained with this dataset. According to Meta AI, ‘3D reconstruction technology will democratise the creation of digital twins’.
Covision’s 3D scanners and technology are also used by the video game industry to produce higher quality game assets faster than traditional methods, as well as by many industrial manufacturing companies to scan their product inventories. Although CAD models exist for many industrial parts, a Covision 3D scan offers greatly improved material properties, textures, colours and appearance, enabling a wide range of applications in manufacturing, marketing and sales.
The funding will strengthen the core scanning business and accelerate the development and commercialisation of next-generation tools and products based on artificial intelligence. The goal is to enable customers to automate content generation from 3D models at scale, improve generative AI models with advances such as text-to-3D and image-to-3D, and expand 3D content applications.
“We are thrilled that Covision Media is the first investment of Italy’s largest AI fund,” said Vincenzo Di Nicola, head of CDP Venture Capital’s Artificial Intelligence Fund, in a note. “Covision Media is an excellent example of an Italian deep-tech company that harnesses the power of AI to develop and deliver exceptional products that bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds.
Michael Brehm, founding partner of Redstone VC, adds: ‘Covision is transforming the way visual content is created and used in different industries. It is by far the best technology globally that we have seen. We are excited to support their journey as they strive to develop ever more innovative tools and products.
The investment in Techshop is supported by CDP Venture Capital SGR Digital Transition Fund – PNRR through resources allocated by the NextGeneration EU initiative. As part of the current funding round, Marco Allegretti, partner of CDP Venture Capital’s Artificial Intelligence Fund, Ben Scheidt, investment director at Redstone, and Gianluca D’Agostino will join the company’s board of directors.
The angel investors include Pietro Perona, a Caltech professor and pioneer of modern machine learning, who has worked with the company since its inception; Daniel Cremers, currently a Caltech professor, lecturer at the Technical University of Munich and a pioneer in the field of 3D artificial intelligence research; Franco Fogliato, CEO of Fossil Group and former CEO of Salomon; Utsav Somani, founder of Offline and one of India’s most prominent investors; Antonio Carriero and Emanuele Visconti, veterans of the global luxury industry; and Nathaniel Barling, operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
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