© Holo-Light/ Michael Kristen

Holo-Light Wants To Become the Global Market Leader in XR Streaming

Founded in 2015, the XR startup Holo-Light develops technologies involved with industrial work processes, such as factory planning or prototype construction, and with the streaming of immersive content. Now more than 40 colleagues are working in Munich and Innsbruck with the founding team, which includes Susanne and Florian Haspinger, Alexander Werlberger, Luis Bollinger and Michael Oberlechner. The series A round of financing in 2019 gave Holo-Light a new boost in development.

Munich Startup: Who are you and what does Holo-Light do? Please introduce yourselves!

Holo-Light: Hi, we’re Flo, Susi, Alex, Luis and Michi, and together we make up the Holo-Light founding team. Our startup specializes in immersive software and technologies for enterprises. We founded back in 2015 at a time when augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) were still new in the industry. An important step back then was Microsoft announcing the release of their first AR headset HoloLens. As friends and students, we saw huge potential in the technology for industrial use, were able to purchase a device early on and used that market advantage to create our first solutions.

Streaming XR content in real time

Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?

Holo-Light: Immersive technologies change the way we experience content. But there are still technological obstacles that make it difficult to use augmented and virtual reality, such as the processing power of mobile end devices. We’ve developed a cross-platform software development kit (SDK) called ISAR that can be used to stream entire AR and VR applications in real time through local servers or the cloud. That means the processing power doesn’t have to come from the device itself anymore. Developers can simply integrate the solution into their own applications, and we’ve also built ISAR into our second product, ARES Pro. This makes it possible for engineers to visualize and edit large 3D CAD files together from any location – which leads to shorter development cycles and seamless product designs. (Note from editor: CAD stands for computer-aided design).

Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!

Holo-Light: Streaming itself is obviously nothing new. But our XR streaming technology makes it possible to experience AR and VR content with an unprecedented level of detail and complexity. 5G, cloud and edge computing are also going to promote further development of the technology. Combined with XR streaming, new use cases for augmented and virtual reality can be tapped into in a way that wasn’t possible until now.

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Holo-Light: “We made a lot of mistakes”

Munich Startup: Was there a point when you nearly failed?

Holo-Light: We made a lot of mistakes, but none of them were fatal. There were just so many things in the beginning that we knew nothing about. Time is a limited resource, and you have to invest it wisely. We’ve definitely become more efficient and focused over the years. Also thanks to our investors. To give an example, they asked us to professionalize our financial processes and motivated and supported us in doing so. We are also more specific now when selecting events and partners.

Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, and where in five years?

Holo-Light: We’ve created a very good technological foundation and are now working more towards scaling. For example, we’re enhancing our support structure right now to get our software to our customers even faster and to also give them updates. As for the product, we see our AR software ARES (‘Augmented Reality Engineering Space’) being used globally and becoming the standard in the industry. And of course we want to tap into the full potential of augmented and virtual reality with our ISAR-SDK. Our vision is to become the global market leader in terms of XR streaming by making it possible to stream all AR and VR applications.

At the same time, we also definitely want to maintain that feeling of familiarity and company loyalty. Keeping things personal and enjoying what you do should still be the focus in five years and not be forgotten in the pursuit of success.

Develop solutions in collaboration with companies

Munich Startup: What do you think about Munich as a startup location?

Holo-Light: As a young tech company, it’s important for us to gain access to industrial companies, and to also get feedback about our solutions. We want to develop in collaboration with companies, not just alongside them. In this case, having Munich as our location is extremely helpful.

Munich Startup: Tea or coffee?

Holo-Light: Without a doubt: tea. It’s always a loyal companion on work days that you can tackle any challenge with. You need a freshly brewed cup of tea to really start the day off right!