Welcome to Viewpoints, news and investment activity covering the next generation of computing - brought to you by FOV Ventures.

This Month:

• Our latest investment backed by YC and a16z

• AI-coustics raises €5m

• GDC / GTC Wrap Up

• More new edge network members

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme, Sointu Karjalainen & David Ripert (FOV Ventures) 

Last month we were in San Francisco and the Bay Area for both Nvidia’s GTC (dubbed the Super Bowl of AI) and Gaming’s GDC.

Superficially separate events, but beneath the surface you'll find the same conversation happening.

Gaming's growth flatlined at 0.6% in 2024. The splashy releases of Switch 2 and GTA 6 might pump that this year, but that's a temporary sugar high. This flattening curve is now positioning user-generated content (UGC) as gaming's most promising structural growth driver in the long term.

As mentioned by Nvidia at GTC, AI is obviously central to this with, procedural generation, photorealistic rendering, and automated testing - creating a bidirectional flow of innovation that accelerates progress in both domains. But as gaming searches for its next evolutionary leap, the existing game engine technology repeatedly shows itself to be foundational to the next generation of AI models, where games provide "the next trillion high-quality tokens to train foundation models."

This technological convergence is reshaping investment theses across VC. A16z's speedrun fund - which we also attended - has explicitly broadened beyond pure gaming to encompass "3D, creative tools, XR, and next-gen entertainment" - a shift that validates FOV's long-standing thesis about spatial computing as the unifying paradigm across gaming, AI, and physical computing.

Further evidence of this last week was Infinite Reality's $207M acquisition of Napster which signals how spatial computing is absorbing adjacent media categories, with their vision for 3D virtual concerts repositioning music as a spatial experience rather than purely auditory content. This pattern of convergence - where distinct categories merge into unified spatial platforms - represents a lucrative opportunity for startups challenging traditional industry players.

What makes this moment particularly compelling for investors is the emergence of concrete applications bridging virtual and physical worlds - and the rationale for our latest investment, Nunu.ai, explains this in more detail.

FOV NEWS

Investing in Nunu

We’re excited to share our investment in Jan Schnyder, Kyrill Hux, Nicolas Muntwyler and the entire Nunu.ai team for their $6M seed round co-led by a16z speedrun and TIRTA Ventures, with participation from ourselves, Y Combinator and other great funds.

Why we're excited:

• Their AI agents excel at game testing AND transfer these skills directly to physical robots

• Game studios using their platform have cut QA costs by 50% while reclaiming 160+ monthly development hours

• They've proven that gaming is the ideal training ground for physical AI, with agents mastering everything from Hogwarts Legacy to Pokémon Emerald

Nunu.ai validate the thesis we opened this newsletter with as they transferred their game-trained agent to a physical robot that successfully navigated real space and retrieved objects i.e. skills learned in virtual environments will directly apply to robotics.

AI|Coustics Raises Oversubscribed €5m Seed Round

While many others are busy making AI speak FOR us, ai|coustics is making sure we can actually hear each other clearly. Their tech repairs missing frequencies in speech - essentially bringing studio quality to any microphone or device.

• 500,000 users have already enhanced 2M+ minutes of audio

• They're fixing the "you sound terrible" problem for everyone from podcasters to Zoom callers

• Major clients already onboard: Elgato, Radio France, Deutsche Welle

FOV At Hello Tomorrow

Petri and David Ripert have recently been in Paris for two inspiring days at Hello Tomorrow 2025! It was a great opportunity to meet people working on deep tech solutions and exchange ideas about the future of innovation.

Going to AWE USA? Here’s a Discount Code!

• 3 days on the bleeding edge of AR/VR

• 500+ speakers, including tech juggernauts, Fortune 500s, and hot startups

• 350+ sponsors/exhibitors

• Thousands of creators, developers, industry execs, founders, entertainers, investors, top press, and more participating in-person and virtually

• Topics covered: Enterprise case studies, latest developer/creator tools, Sales, Marketing and branded experiences, AR Cloud, WebXR, 5G , AI, Web3, haptics, privacy and ethics, Entertainment, Education, and more

“25FOV10D” - you can distribute this to your network and it will give 10% OFF at registration to the members of your community.

FOV Portfolio News

IXI has rebranded from Pixieray! They are redefining vision correction with the world's first adaptive eyewear, providing seamless clarity wherever you look. See more: ixieyewear.com

Ray Browser has reached an incredible milestone of 100,000 unique users! COO Antti Jäderholm: "We started with 10 users in July targeting 10k by year-end, and we've completely blown past that goal." The team is working on major updates while you can check out their current features at playonray.com.

Aicoustics is gearing up for major platform upgrades including a unified Web and API platform, lightweight real-time models, studio-quality SDK, enhanced user control, and automatic audio quality detection and classification.

Starstuff continues moving at warp speed with three game-changing features: video feeds for instant memories, new games with unlimited remixability, and challenges with level-ups and rewards. Built for play, engineered for the future.

Flow Computing was featured in Tech Funding News highlighting how global teams are shaping the future of deep tech in Finland.

Distance Technologies and defence company Patria have a new partnership on groundbreaking 3D night vision directly through the windshield of Patria's 6x6 armored vehicles, turning night into day with mixed reality.

Double Point made headlines with their WowMouse Pro launch at Mobile World Congress covered in WIRED.

Scenario is prepping exciting updates for large-scale creative teams, secure IP & data management, and their vision for 3D & video workflows coming in 2025.

MoveAI unveiled Move Pro 2.0 with local secure processing, faster GPU performance, cloud scaling, and second-generation AI models, alongside MoveAI Gen 2 featuring full-body dynamics, joint torque, ground reaction forces, advanced retargeting and motion prediction that works across multiple video sources and environments. Launched at Movement Day, BAFTA London.

FOV Job Board

Open Roles

• IXI (Espoo): Electronics Test Engineer, Senior Algorithm Developer, Industrial Designer

• Doublepoint (Helsinki): Senior Signal Processing Engineer, Lead ML Engineer

• ai|coustics (Berlin): Founding GTM/Sales, Platform Engineer

• nunu.ai: Multiple positions in Zürich (Marketing, AAA Game Agent, Web Demo, Full-Stack/Unreal/AI roles) and San Francisco (Engineering roles)

• ZENOS (UK/Europe/Remote): Senior Unreal Programmer, Technical VFX Artist, Gameplay Programmer, Product Manager