Oblong Industries, the company best known to the general public for creating the computer interfaces used in the movie Minority Report, has closed a Series B round of funding led by existing investor the Foundry Group with participation from new investors Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners and GE-NRG Energy-ConocoPhillips’ Energy Technology Ventures.
Further specifics were not disclosed.
Oblong said the influx will help it reach a broader market with its “g-speak spatial operating environment,” an operating system provides data visualization, analytics, and integration capabilities across multiple computers, screens, and applications. It supports many different sizes of computers and uses, but in each case it can be controlled by gestures using its interactive hand and object tracking capabilities.
Kwindla Hultman Kramer, Oblong’s CEO, said its multi-user, multi-screen, multi-device spatial operating environment is already in use by companies like Boeing, SAP and GE Digital Energy.
The g-speak environment also powers Oblong’s Mezzanine product, which makes integrates tele-presence into its collaborative environment.
“We believe Oblong’s spatial operating system is revolutionizing the way people interact with their computers,” said Jamey Sperans, managing director, Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners. “We are delighted to be partnering with Oblong’s team of visionaries in pursuing the multiple market opportunities for this transformative technology.”
GE’s partnership with Oblong is through GE’s $20 million ecomagination Accelerator program, which was spun off from the $200 million ecomagination challenge.
“We seek to invest in brilliant innovations that solve real problems with a talented team that can execute. We found that in Oblong. Their groundbreaking technology has the potential to fundamentally change how we interact with and act on data,” said Kevin Skillern, GE Energy Financial Services’ managing director of venture capital and representative of Energy Technology Ventures.
Related links:
http://www.energytechnologyventures.com
Photo shows Tom Cruise in the 2002 movie, “Minority Report“
