A multi-million-dollar Californian virtual reality company has acquired a London-based start-up in one of the first major exit deals of the current UK proptech cycle.
Matterport finalised a deal on Friday to acquire Virtual Walkthrough for an undisclosed sum.
The deal, which marks one of the first significant exits of a proptech start-up in the UK, will see Virtual Walkthrough become a wholly owned subsidiary of Matterport as the US giant looks to expand in Europe.
Founding partner of Virtual Walkthrough James Morris-Manuel will remain with the company in a senior role as EMEA sales director.
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He said the closure of the deal was “very encouraging” for proptech as a sector in general and, more specifically, in the wake of the UK’s referendum vote to leave the EU.
He said: “We are still an English-speaking country in Europe with or without Brexit. And while that did obviously come up during negotiations it didn’t affect the deal at all.”
Launched in spring 2014, Virtual Walkthrough has more than 200 clients, including CBRE, Standard Life, Hammerson, Winkworth and sellmyhome.co.uk.
It was established to modernise the ways in which residential and commercial properties are marketed online, creating fully navigable 360° online virtual tours, virtual reality, RICS standard floorplans, photographs and videos. The company has since extended its focus to also include leisure and venue locations, from hotels to exhibition spaces.
Established in 2011, Matterport is an immersive media technology company that delivers an end-to-end system for creating, modifying, distributing, and navigating immersive 3D and virtual reality versions of real-world spaces on web, mobile and VR devices, creating a complete virtual model of the world that changes the way individuals and industries interact with physical spaces.
Funded by venture capitalists and media companies, Matterport is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with satellite offices in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago.
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