Virtual experience company Touchcast has raised $55 million in Series A funding, the company announced Wednesday. The money will be used to scale Touchcast's virtual events platform, which combines "AI and mixed reality to deliver a virtual platform that redefines how knowledge is created and shared across space and time," according to the company.
The funding was led by Accenture Ventures, Alexander Capital Ventures, Saatchi Invest, Ronald Lauder and others.
Touchcast cited a Grand View Research report that projected the virtual event global market would reach more than $400 billion by 2027, with enterprise investment in infrastructure, services and technology driving this growth.
Funders are paying attention. In addition to Bizzabo raising $138 million in December, Airmeet's $12 million September funding round and Run the World's $15 million round in May, a few more event platforms are gaining momentum.
The London-based Hopin virtual events solution, founded in 2019, has raised $170 million to date, with $125 million of that coming in a Series B round in November led by IVP and Tiger Global. The company was valued at an eye-popping $2.1 billion and has grown from eight employees to nearly 300 across 38 countries. The company acquired the event app Topi in December and live video streaming studio startup StreamYard for $250 million in January.
Welcome—which pivoted soon after the pandemic hit from an app to connect restaurants and food wholesalers to a virtual events platform—raised $12 million in Series A funding in November, led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Y Combinator, Kapor Capital and Webb Investor Network. Co-founder and CEO Roberto Ortiz positions it as a high-end, white-labeled platform that emphasizes quality and design first, to easily produce an experience that feels "like an Apple product launch." Welcome surpassed seven figures in revenue three months after launch, according to a spokesperson, and clients have included Netflix, Oracle and Okta.
Berlin-based Wonder, founded last April as Yotribe, in early December announced it had raised $11 million in seed funding from European VC EQT Ventures and BlueYard Capital to make video connections "more spontaneous and fluid." Clients have included NASA, Deloitte and SAP, according to Techcrunch.
Hubilo pivoted from an in-person events platform to a virtual events platform in March and in October raised $4.5 million in a seed round, led by Lightspeed. Clients have included Roche, Fortune and the United Nations, according to Techcrunch.