Source: Yoom
The Israeli startup company Tetavi announced today (Tuesday) the completion of a fundraising round and the change of its name to Yoom. The company announced the raising of 15 million dollars from several well-known figures, including Jimmy Iovine, who together with Dr. Dre founded Beats and established one of the largest labels in the world – Interscope; Maverick Carter – the business manager of NBA star LeBron James; Phineas O’Connell – Bailey Eilish’s brother and music producer and Justin Lubliner – the director of the Darkroom label that Eilish is signed to. Existing investors in the company, including the Insight Partners fund, also participated in the round.
Bet on the Metaverse
Yoom (formerly Tetavi) has developed a comprehensive camera system, which knows how to capture and broadcast live high-quality volumetric video. The company’s technology can produce figures, record video and even produce holograms live – and all this with the help of a mobile system, without the need for a green screen or studio, and in high quality. For the purpose of the activity, the company’s system is based on between 4 and 8 depth cameras only, computer vision algorithms and artificial intelligence.
The technology actually allows the viewer to move freely within the scene – just like in a computer game – and it can be integrated into television content such as sports games, apps and mobile games as well as augmented and virtual reality glasses. In keeping with the spirit of the times, Yoom says that they target their product, among other things, for the Web3 and Metaverse worlds.
“There are some very cool projects that are being worked on right now and I can’t talk about them yet. But not long ago we released a collaboration with the LA Kings hockey team. We set up our studio right on the ice, filmed the hockey players in volumetric video and moved them into the Metaverse,” he says in the conversation With Gigtime Yoom CEO Gilad Talmon. According to him, the advantage of volumetric video, beyond the ease and quality of photography and production that our technology and tools make possible, is the creation of photorealistic content that is adapted to 3D creation.
Talmon added that “this is especially important for experiences that seek realism such as ‘digital twin’ experiences, content that is meant to convey an accurate range of facial expressions and emotions or content that puts a real person at the center such as an actor or singer and wants to accurately convey it into a three-dimensional digital experience.”
In the past you said that the world is marching towards the metaverse and the worlds of 3D, when it is a matter of 5-10 years. But we see that Facebook invests billions in Metaverse, without bringing users – including developers in the company. Microsoft is also not really breaking ground with the HoloLens and is forced to cooperate with Meta. Could it be that the entire metaverse is hype? Don’t you feel that way?
“It really depends on how you define metatowers, because while the adoption of devices that sit on the eyes is still behind (and as mentioned it will take another period of years before they are powerful and cheap enough to replace mobile phones) the entry of more and more creators, singers, movies and sports leagues, into immersive-gaming worlds (from Fortnite to Sandbox through Roblox), is only growing all the time. We see it in the number of requests we have from creators and creators from the world of music and the growing interest among sports leagues around the world. There is a growing interest in being able to communicate directly with the audience through all those game/virtual worlds”.