Arthur Announces Beta Availability of Its VR Office Space Service and Seed Funding
Geographically Dispersed Teams Meet, Collaborate & Manage Their Work
All Within a 3D Virtual Space Accessible Through VR Devices or PCs;
Initial Funding of $2.5 Million Secured from Draper Associates
Arthur – a pioneering company in the virtual collaboration market – today announced it is enabling an open exclusive Beta to allow interested companies to try out its new virtual office space service. The solution is available for use in either full immersive VR via leading headsets or through any Arthur’s web application through any web browser for those without access to VR hardware. iOS™ and Google® Android® mobile device access is coming in the near future.
Organizations involved in the closed Beta of the platform include the United Nations; Societe Generale, one of the leading European financial services groups; one of the largest automotive companies in the world and one of the largest professional services firms in the world. After several years of ongoing development by the globally distributed Arthur team, the company is further announcing it has secured seed funding from renowned Silicon Valley VC Draper Associates®, among others. The total amount raised is $2.5 million to date and Arthur is now evaluating its Series A funding options.
In many ways, Arthur’s office spaces can be considered real offices, only with the added bonus of unlimited digital possibilities: just as in real life, your virtual office can be easily decorated with standard office equipment and furniture such as pictures, couches and company-specific logos or gadgets. You can even meet your colleagues with true-to-life avatars – either in planned meetings or impromptu run-ins at your virtual coffee kitchen, giving you the feeling of truly being in the same space without lag or buffering.
Using Arthur is very simple: by putting on an untethered and lightweight Virtual Reality headset such as the new Facebook® Oculus® Quest 2 or any laptop, tablet or smartphone (mobile devices coming soon), users enter their virtual office without a second of travel. These virtual office spaces are mainly designed for productive remote collaboration in geographically dispersed companies as well as smaller companies. It is also effective for individuals seeking a seamless way to engage in productive discourse with third parties from a distance.
“Our team has used Arthur and its VR Workshop and Seminar capabilities successfully across multiple geographies and organizations within the United Nations,” said Andreas Klemmer, Director of Training for The International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization of the United Nations. “We can work together with multiple teams across the world and collaborate and innovate in ways we never thought previously possible. This technology is truly a paradigm shift for engaging, high quality work and allows us to deliver great results to all our stakeholders without any geographical limits.”
Going beyond what is possible in real life, Arthur equips its customers with ‘superpowers’ such as teleporting from place-to-place or the ability to lift, scale and move whatever they want. Perhaps the two biggest advantages over real offices, however, are that users can work with anyone from anywhere at any time, and that real estate is exponentially cheaper.
To ensure the success of its offering, Arthur provides a wide range of features that enhance productivity at every level of the experience: from world-class spatial audio that can facilitate group workshops to whiteboards, virtual monitors, comprehensive file integration systems, presentations, Internet browsers and many more. Beyond user-facing features, Arthur places an extremely high value on data security – which is why the software uses end-to-end encryption and other important measures to ensure that data of Arthur’s clients is always fully secure. Visit www.arthur.digital for detailed information, screenshots, videos and more.
Arthur’s virtual office uses ‘space’ more productively, efficiently and creatively than any other application currently on the market. The service is powered by Amazon® AWS™ and can scale to meet any size environment and VR requirement to make it all possible in an effortless and truly natural fashion; you can easily get 40 meeting participants in the same virtual office space and still have a fully stable meeting experience.
“Arthur enables remote collaboration without reducing the ability to be creative or efficient with your colleagues, while simultaneously elevating productivity to a whole new level through the company’s advanced technology and intuitive user interface,” said Christoph Fleischmann, founder and CEO of Arthur. “Your Arthur-based office is infinitely large, Carbon Dioxide neutral, and physically close to everyone — and infinitely safer for your workers than congregating in the home office or traveling during the age of COVID-19.”
At its core, the company wanted to create equal opportunities for everyone, regardless of their location across a far-flung world – whether you live in San Francisco or New York, London or Berlin shouldn’t matter to an employer or partner. Whether an exact replica of your standard office conference room or a fanciful environment limited only by your imagination, Arthur delivers an experience optimized for productive meetings that have become necessities in today’s world with limited travel and increased work-from-home.
“Arthur allows us to connect with our clients in an innovative and efficient way. The vast virtual spaces enable us to dive deep into our analysis and provide our clients with more context – with the right experts for the topic present, no matter where they might physically be,” said Frank Burkhardt, Managing Director of Société Générale.
All Arthur rooms and environments are persistent and can be easily reconfigured on-the-fly if required – want to move to a larger space? Easy. Teleport to a new environment? Effortless.
