Misapplied Sciences, the Seattle-area company behind a screen that can show different things to multiple people at the same time, has raised more cash.
A new regulatory filing shows that the startup has reeled in a $7 million investment. The company did not respond to GeekWire’s inquiries about the new funding.
Misapplied’s tech is built on a different kind of pixel — one that can send different colors of light in tens of thousands of directions. Put those pixels together into a display, and it means that a bunch of people standing in a room, each looking at the same screen, see different images.
Combine that with location sensors, and the company says it’s possible for a display to follow a person through physical space.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company was started in 2014 and is led by CTO Paul Dietz, CEO Albert Ng and chief creative and operating officer Dave Thompson. The team operated in stealth mode for several years before unveiling their technology last year. Misapplied Sciences won the Innovation of the Year award at the GeekWire Awards this past May.
Dietz, the company’s CTO and chairman, is known in the engineering world for pioneering work on multi-touch screens at Microsoft Research. He also spent time at Disney, working on the “Pal Mickey” interactive toy.
GeekWire Podcast: ‘Parallel reality’ displays show different content to multiple people, simultaneously
Ng also worked at Microsoft Research during Dietz’s tenure. Thompson was a show producer at Walt Disney Imagineering while Dietz was working in that division.
Other startups have tried to find ways to show different things to people using a single display. MirraViz is a startup that uses projectors to display different content to multiple people on the same screen.
At first, Misapplied’s screen sounds strange, like what would happen if Willy Wonka designed a jumbotron. But its overall vision aligns with the goals of modern advertising. Delivering unique advertising to people based on data is, after all, the magic sauce that built Google and Facebook.
Beyond ads, Misapplied says the technology could eventually be used on roadways to show drivers individualized signs. In airports, information screens could display personalized flight information.
The company previously raised a $3.4 million equity investment, and landed a $900,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research program.
Misapplied investor and board member Carl Ledbetter of Pelion Venture Partners was among those listed on the filing. So was Mike Edelhart, who is managing partner at startup investor Social Starts, according to LinkedIn.
