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Loom.ai is a startup company that provides technology for creating personalized and dynamic 3D avatars from photographs for messaging, social VR, chatbots, games, e-commerce, and virtual classrooms for individuals and businesses around the world. Roblox acquired Loom.ai in December 2020, causing Roblox to announce it was delaying its IPO.
Loom.ai uses technology in computer vision and machine learning combined with VFX magic to create life-like human face visualizations. The animated and expressive faces can be used to power applications in VR, gaming, messaging, e-commerce.
Kiran Bhat, former Senior Research and Development Engineer at LucasFilms and Mahesh Ramasubramanian, and former VFX supervisor at DreamWorks Animation founded Loom.ai in 2016.
Loom.ai is funded by Silicon Valley investors including Danhua Capital, Y Combinator, Presence Capital, Anorak Ventures, Zach Coelius’ syndicate and individuals including GV partner Joe Kraus.
On June 1, 2016 Loom.ai announced raising $1.35 million in seed funding from Y Combinator, Presence Capital, DHVC, Anorak Ventures, Zach Coelius, and Joe Kraus. The company plans on using their funding to improve their avatar technology.
On March 1, 2017 Loom.ai announced raising their second round of seed funding with an undisclosed amount of funding from undisclosed investors.
On August 1, 2017 Loom.ai announced raising $1.5 million in funding for their third seed funding round from GREE VR Capital, Dentsu Ventures, DHVC, and Zach Coelius.
On May 3, 2018 Loom.ai announced raising $3 million in funding for their fourth seed round from Samsung Ventures. The company plans on using their funding to hire more employees and establish additional partnerships for the development of its SDK solution technology.
Roblox acquired Loom.ai on December 14, 2020 for an undisclosed price. The company announced it would integrate the Loom.ai technology into their realistic avatar system to help create a metaverse, or a collection of virtual worlds that were interconnected. Following the announcement, Loom.ai founders Mahesh Ramasubramanian and Kiran Bhat said, "their dream come true is the opportunity to build real-life facial expressions with real emotion for millions of Roblox players."
Roblox's acquisition of the 3D avatar company came alongside news that Roblox would be postponing its initial public offering (IPO) to 2021. Roblox later went public via direct listing on March 10, 2021, opening at $64.50 a share. The opening share price was almost $20 higher than the $45 per share it sold for in its previous private funding round in late 2020.
