Company founded by leaders from NASA, Caltech and Wall Street raises $3M seed round

PASADENA, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — January 26, 2017 — Virtualitics, LLC, a data analytics in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) startup, today announced the launch of its new tool that combines powerful data visualization in VR/AR and artificial intelligence to provide insights and discover actionable knowledge hidden in big and complex data. The company also announced they closed a $3 million investment seed round from angel investors.

Virtualitics combines VR/AR with machine learning and natural language in a data exploration, collaborative environment suitable for both data scientists and non-expert users. The technology is the only one of its kind that can provide a simultaneous rendering of up to 10 dimensions, revealing multidimensional relationships present in the data, which may not be discoverable in any other way.

The company is based on over a decade of research at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and was founded by: professor George Djorgovski, the founding director of Caltech’s Center for Data-Driven Discovery; Michael Amori, former Deutsche Bank managing director, Harvard MBA and Caltech alumnus; Dr. Ciro Donalek, computational scientist at Caltech; and Dr. Scott Davidoff, manager of the Human Interfaces Group at NASA’s JPL.

“Big Data is worthless if we cannot extract actionable knowledge from it,” said Michael Amori, CEO of Virtualitics. “Visualization can reveal the knowledge hidden in data, but traditional 2-D and 3-D data visualizations are inadequate for large and complex data sets. Our solution is to visualize as many as 10 dimensions in VR/AR all via a Shared Virtual Office, which allows even untrained users to spot patterns in data that can give companies a competitive edge.”

Dr. Donalek, CTO of Virtualitics and a machine learning and VR expert added: “In recent years, machine learning has helped to solve complex scientific and business problems; adding VR and immersive collaborative environments will increase even further our ability to understand data.”

According to professor Djorgovski, renowned astrophysicist and a pioneer in the uses of VR as a scientific platform: “VR is intrinsically well-suited for human perception, intuition and pattern recognition, leading to insights that may be difficult or even impossible to gain through any traditional visualization technique. It is a natural environment for collaborative visual data exploration and data analytics that enables teams of users, who may be continents apart, to interact with the data and with each other in a shared virtual space. It may also be a natural environment where humans can interact with their artificial intelligence assistants.”

“We’ve long noted the benefits of VR/AR for some of the most complex initiatives we’ve undertaken at NASA,” said Dr. Davidoff, a leading expert in AR and manager of the team that created a “Virtual Mars” for NASA. “This technology also has the potential to change the way the business world thinks about, views and harnesses the potential of Big Data.”

Virtualitics board of advisors includes: Andy Walter, former global vice president, IT for Procter & Gamble; Jerry del Missier, former COO of Barclays Bank; Alexander Lidow, CEO and co-founder of Efficient Power Conversion (EPC); Henry Ritchotte, former COO of Deutsche Bank; Paul Fox, vice president, strategic initiatives for Procter & Gamble; Henry Hsu, board member of a Taiwanese accelerator; and Andy Wilson, Pasadena City Councilman and tech entrepreneur.

“Companies around the world are struggling to harness the power of Big and Small, but complex, Data. They are also investing heavily in key talent, analysts and data scientists, because they want to provide the best tools to collaborate and identify patterns that will impact the bottom line,” said Andy Walter, strategic advisor to Virtualitics. “Virtualitics has been able to create the virtual office of the future, which will allow even the largest, most complex global companies to easily find and share patterns that could significantly improve the way they do business.”

Virtualitics is currently in private beta. For more information or to request a demo, visit: www.virtualitics.com.

About Virtualitics, LLC

Virtualitics, LLC is a data visualization company based in Pasadena, California, that merges artificial intelligence, Big Data and virtual/augmented reality to gain insights from big and complex data sets. Its data exploration, collaborative environment is suitable for both data scientists and non-expert users and reveals multidimensional relationships present in the data, which may not be discoverable in any other way.

The company is based on over a decade of research at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and was founded by: professor George Djorgovski, the founding director of Caltech’s Center for Data-Driven Discovery; Michael Amori, former Deutsche Bank managing director, Harvard MBA and Caltech alumnus; Dr. Ciro Donalek, computational scientist at Caltech; and Dr. Scott Davidoff, manager of the Human Interfaces Group at NASA’s JPL.

Web | www.virtualitics.com
Linkedin | Virtualitics, LLC
Twitter | @virtualiticsVR