US giant Qualcomm acquires Ukrainian Augmented Pixels
Qualcomm, a US manufacturer of chipsets, software, and a service provider, has acquired the Ukrainian startup Augmented Pixels, representatives of the startup report.
- The financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. But the founder and CEO of the company, Vitaliy Goncharuk, has confirmed the acquisition to AIN.UA.
- Since its inception, the startup has raised about $7 million. Its last $2 million round was in February 2021. Among the startup’s investors are AVentures Capital, ICU, Ciklum founder Torben Majgaard, as well as The Hive and Steltec Capital.
- Augmented Pixels has offices in the US and Ukraine — Kyiv and Odesa. Vitaliy Goncharuk, citing the deal’s confidentiality, could not answer what would happen to the offices after the deal.
At the moment, there is no official statement from Qualcomm regarding its acquisition. We can assume that technologies and expertise of Augmented Pixels could help increase its department, Extended Reality (XR) — Mixed Reality, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality together. The last one is where Goncharuk’s team is the most strong. Such an assumption could also be confirmed by the fact that Goncharuk will remain at Qualcomm in the XR team after the deal.
One of the active investors in Ukraine told AIN.UA that the Augmented Pixels startup could be actually acquired because of its team — to accelerate their own XR team and get expertise in the rapidly increasing market.
This deal also became an exit for the Augmented Pixels’ first investor, AVentures Capital. According to its representatives, the investment fund was the second-largest investor at the moment of the deal, so they “have made good money on exit.” The financial results of this deal are not known.
All the parties refused to comment on it, referring to NDA.
Because of the lack of details, we cannot name the exact sum of the deal. According to AIN.UA sources, it could hit $50 million on top, but most likely, it was in the range between $20 and $30 million.