Startups

Refract raises $8.5M SGD funding, announces new game development division 

Comment

Refract
Image Credits: Refract

Refract, a Singapore-based extended reality (XR) startup, announced today it has raised an approximately $8.5 million SGD (approximately $6 million) Series A from investors including Sea Limited, international family offices and individuals.

The latest funding will be used to intensify R&D for AXIS, a wearable and game-oriented full-body motion capture solution. The startup also plans to expand its team in preparation for the commercialization of AXIS later this year to cater to the rapidly growing market of gamers, tech adopters, content creators and fitness enthusiasts. The Series A round brings Refract’s total raised to $9 million.

In 2018, three co-founders of Refract, Chong Geng Ng, Michael Chng and Eugene Koh, worked on a gaming-related project and encountered a problem statement: How would one bridge the gap between gaming and physical activity? CEO of Refract Chng told TechCrunch that the solution they found was to allow players to use their bodies as game controllers. After poring over documents and articles of cutting-edge technological innovations in gaming and applications in other industries, the three co-founders identified a gap in the market and set up Refract.

“Refract’s goal has always been to become a key player in AR and XR gaming, and this funding enables us to accelerate this process,” said Chng. 

Image Credits: AXIS

The funding announcement comes on the heels of the successful completion of crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for AXIS and its XR game publishing division set up via the Deep Dive Studios acquisition. 

Unlike full-body motion tracking systems like Perception Neuron, Rokoko and Xsens, AXIS is for real-time gaming and entertainment use. AXIS also allows users the flexibility of using between 7-10 nodes for gaming or up to the industry standard of 17 for higher-precision motion tracking. AXIS doesn’t need a base station, but still requires Wi-Fi to connect to the user’s computer.

“AXIS will be fully untethered and wireless, requiring no external base stations or setups. Everything is on the body, with proprietary inside-out tracking capability. This addresses common issues like occlusion and space requirements of systems such as HTC Vive,” Chng told TechCrunch.

Refract will continue delivering immersive and engaging XR and VR experiences to a growing market of 2.9 billion gamers through its games and technology, such as the wearable AXIS. 

Its Deep Dive Studios enables Refract to create more immersive titles to supplement its roster of offerings, such as the FreeStriker fighting game, which is currently in development and will be available free for all AXIS customers. 

To make it accessible to game developers and content creators, Refract’s software suite is compatible with platforms like OpenVR, OpenXR, Unity and Unreal engines, and existing VR systems and applications. AXIS can also work with popular VR headsets like the Oculus Quest 2, Chng said.

Refract is eyeing more vertical and horizontal integrations in the sector. 

Refract has already secured strategic relationships with the likes of World Taekwondo as part of its virtual sports program, working with the federation to make Virtual Taekwondo a medal event in the near future. The partnership came about when World Taekwondo saw an opportunity to gamify the sport and reach out to a broader, tech-savvy audience by creating a new discipline, Chng told TechCrunch. Refract also plans to feature AXIS at the 2022 Global Esports Games in Istanbul, Turkey. 

Refract
Image Credits: Refract

“AXIS represents a huge step forward in bringing high fidelity motion tracking and capture technology to a broader audience; innovating within the space and delivering even more immersive gaming experiences,” said Chong Geng Ng, executive director of Refract. “Our investment reflects the strong belief Sea and our other investors have in our vision and creativity as well as the huge untapped potential of the XR gaming market.” 

What Netflix’s move into gaming means for developers

“It’s exciting to see a Singaporean company like Refract driving the development of innovative technologies in XR and VR,” said Jason Ng, vice president of strategic partnerships, at Sea’s digital entertainment arm, Garena. “We are pleased to support their growth and the development of the overall innovation ecosystem in Singapore.” 

“Sea and our other investors recognized the talent at Refract as well as the enormous potential of AXIS. The successful completion of the AXIS Kickstarter campaign proves that there is a dedicated community of gamers who share this vision, and we look forward to delivering AXIS and FreeStriker to them in 2022,” Chng said. 

Make Hollywood-quality animations at low-budget prices with this motion capture suit

More TechCrunch

The company says it’s refocusing and prioritizing fewer initiatives that will have the biggest impact on customers and add value to the business.

SeekOut, a recruiting startup last valued at $1.2 billion, lays off 30% of its workforce

The U.K.’s self-proclaimed “world-leading” regulations for self-driving cars are now official, after the Automated Vehicles (AV) Act received royal assent — the final rubber stamp any legislation must go through…

UK’s autonomous vehicle legislation becomes law, paving the way for first driverless cars by 2026

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved…

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

SoLo Funds CEO Travis Holoway: “Regulators seem driven by press releases when they should be motivated by true consumer protection and empowering equitable solutions.”

Fintech lender Solo Funds is being sued again by the government over its lending practices

Hard tech startups generate a lot of buzz, but there’s a growing cohort of companies building digital tools squarely focused on making hard tech development faster, more efficient, and —…

Rollup wants to be the hardware engineer’s workhorse

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is not just about groundbreaking innovations, insightful panels, and visionary speakers — it’s also about listening to YOU, the audience, and what you feel is top of…

Disrupt Audience Choice vote closes Friday

Google says the new SDK would help Google expand on its core mission of connecting the right audience to the right content at the right time.

Google is launching a new Android feature to drive users back into their installed apps

Jolla has taken the official wraps off the first version of its personal server-based AI assistant in the making. The reborn startup is building a privacy-focused AI device — aka…

Jolla debuts privacy-focused AI hardware

OpenAI is removing one of the voices used by ChatGPT after users found that it sounded similar to Scarlett Johansson, the company announced on Monday. The voice, called Sky, is…

OpenAI to remove ChatGPT’s Scarlett Johansson-like voice

The ChatGPT mobile app’s net revenue first jumped 22% on the day of the GPT-4o launch and continued to grow in the following days.

ChatGPT’s mobile app revenue saw its biggest spike yet following GPT-4o launch

Dating app maker Bumble has acquired Geneva, an online platform built around forming real-world groups and clubs. The company said that the deal is designed to help it expand its…

Bumble buys community building app Geneva to expand further into friendships

CyberArk — one of the army of larger security companies founded out of Israel — is acquiring Venafi, a specialist in machine identity, for $1.54 billion. 

CyberArk snaps up Venafi for $1.54B to ramp up in machine-to-machine security

Founder-market fit is one of the most crucial factors in a startup’s success, and operators (someone involved in the day-to-day operations of a startup) turned founders have an almost unfair advantage…

OpenseedVC, which backs operators in Africa and Europe starting their companies, reaches first close of $10M fund

A Singapore High Court has effectively approved Pine Labs’ request to shift its operations to India.

Pine Labs gets Singapore court approval to shift base to India

The AI Safety Institute, a U.K. body that aims to assess and address risks in AI platforms, has said it will open a second location in San Francisco. 

UK opens office in San Francisco to tackle AI risk

Companies are always looking for an edge, and searching for ways to encourage their employees to innovate. One way to do that is by running an internal hackathon around a…

Why companies are turning to internal hackathons

Featured Article

I’m rooting for Melinda French Gates to fix tech’s broken ‘brilliant jerk’ culture

Women in tech still face a shocking level of mistreatment at work. Melinda French Gates is one of the few working to change that.

1 day ago
I’m rooting for Melinda French Gates to fix tech’s  broken ‘brilliant jerk’ culture

Blue Origin has successfully completed its NS-25 mission, resuming crewed flights for the first time in nearly two years. The mission brought six tourist crew members to the edge of…

Blue Origin successfully launches its first crewed mission since 2022

Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the top entertainment and sports talent agencies, is hoping to be at the forefront of AI protection services for celebrities in Hollywood. With many…

Hollywood agency CAA aims to help stars manage their own AI likenesses

Expedia says Rathi Murthy and Sreenivas Rachamadugu, respectively its CTO and senior vice president of core services product & engineering, are no longer employed at the travel booking company. In…

Expedia says two execs dismissed after ‘violation of company policy’

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review. This week had two major events from OpenAI and Google. OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new model, GPT-4o, which…

OpenAI and Google lay out their competing AI visions

When Jeffrey Wang posted to X asking if anyone wanted to go in on an order of fancy-but-affordable office nap pods, he didn’t expect the post to go viral.

With AI startups booming, nap pods and Silicon Valley hustle culture are back

OpenAI’s Superalignment team, responsible for developing ways to govern and steer “superintelligent” AI systems, was promised 20% of the company’s compute resources, according to a person from that team. But…

OpenAI created a team to control ‘superintelligent’ AI — then let it wither, source says

A new crop of early-stage startups — along with some recent VC investments — illustrates a niche emerging in the autonomous vehicle technology sector. Unlike the companies bringing robotaxis to…

VCs and the military are fueling self-driving startups that don’t need roads

When the founders of Sagetap, Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes, started working at early-stage enterprise software startups, they were surprised to find that the companies they worked at were trying…

Deal Dive: Sagetap looks to bring enterprise software sales into the 21st century

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…

This Week in AI: OpenAI moves away from safety

After Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to permit game emulators, the retro game emulator Delta — an app 10 years in the making — hit the top of the…

Adobe comes after indie game emulator Delta for copying its logo

Meta is once again taking on its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature…

Meta’s latest experiment borrows from BeReal’s and Snapchat’s core ideas

Welcome to Startups Weekly! We’ve been drowning in AI news this week, with Google’s I/O setting the pace. And Elon Musk rages against the machine.

Startups Weekly: It’s the dawning of the age of AI — plus,  Musk is raging against the machine

IndieBio’s Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th cohort of biotech startups. We took special note of a few, which were making some major, bordering on ludicrous, claims…

IndieBio’s SF incubator lineup is making some wild biotech promises