Why We Invested in Graswald

We are stoked to publicly announce our investment in Graswald.ai’s €3.3M Seed Round, alongside our friends at Supernode and Lakestar.

Graswald is a next generation 3D tool, which uses the power of Gaussian splatting to turn videos and images of real-world objects into photorealistic 3D models.

In simple terms, imagine taking a video of a chair, or a shoe and then being able to have that object as a model inside a 3D environment or embedded on a website.

Previously, you would need years of training in 3D software to produce production ready content. Now, with Graswald, companies like e-commerce brands can digitise their entire product catalog into photorealistic 3D models without any special expertise.

The accessibility of 3D creation is a big deal.

At FOV, we believe the future of commerce is spatial - that online shopping will escape the flat screen and become a 3D experience.

The upside of this thesis is already true, 3D product visuals increase conversion rates (+30%) and reduce refunds (-50%).

This belief has driven our investments in companies like M-XR (A universal 3D capture method enabling accurate measurement of real-world materials), and Aino (3D and AR Showrooms), which an investment in Graswald fits well alongside.

The lines between the digital and physical world are blurring. In the future we will capture 3D assets as easily as we take photos and render them both in the real world and in virtual environments.

Graswald enables the 3 main use cases that make 3D so powerful:

• Content Creation - digitise anything with Graswald’s AI.

• Content Editing - allows anyone to create 3D scenes/experiences quickly

• Content Sharing - Graswald’s high performance web-based view allows photorealistic displays of even the most complex images.

What sets Graswald apart from anything similar is their superior quality, through a new rasterisation technique (how shapes and lines from computer designs become images).

Basically, detail and realism in real-time and in the browser is almost impossible to achieve without Graswald’s solution, especially for complex objects. This will revolutionise how brands can use 3D to visualise their products.

See this example of this below product in 3D here.

The manual process for this object took less than 5 minutes (just creating a quick video with an iPhone), the rest happens automatically in the cloud through Graswald’s AI pipeline.

Other 3D commerce solutions require you to manually create your 3D visuals before you can use the platform either by sending the products to them physically or by hiring an expensive 3D agency. Graswald allows fast in-house digitisation of an entire catalog with a process so simple, an intern can do it!

Graswald’s Awesome Team

Starting as a teenager, the Founder and CEO Julius Harling’s commitment to accessibility in 3D is fuelled by the continuous support of the 170K-strong community he built organically.

“3D is the next generation of medium, but the way it is created is still stuck in the 90s” he says. “By leveraging the latest advancements in generative AI, we’re building the future of 3D creation for businesses & individuals.”

Julius's journey in 3D began at the age of 13 when he started designing 3D animals for a zoo simulation game after school. With a passion for teaching and building 3D products, he debuted as an industry speaker at the Blender Conference at just 17 years old. The idea for Graswald today was born out of photorealistic nature asset packs Julius was creating for blender in 2018 solving the issue of static and unrealistic vegetation in digital environments by providing diverse variants of the same plant species.

We are excited for Graswald to continue to build on their organically grown user base of 170,000 3D creatives world wide, and they now also have BigTech companies among their customers.

- If you are an online retailer, 3D agency or product visualisation specialist, check out Graswald’s website and schedule a graswald.ai demo and introduction.

In this round, alongside Supernode and Lakestar, FOV are joined by HTGF and Robin Capital, with strategic angels such as Arnav Bimbhet and Christopher North completing the round among others.

This is also our second investment in Germany (👋 Atopia), and we look forward to see more companies from there.

To see what else we are looking to invest in across 2024, take a look back at our key investment themes - and, if you are working on a startup, or investing yourself across any of these themes we would love to hear from you! Reach out on LinkedIn or submit details here.