Razor’s Edge Ventures, a venture firm set up by a management including top executives at US-based defence contractor Blackbird Technologies, has bought a stake in visual computing software company Mersive with a multi-million dollar investment.
The company also secured a strategic investment and technology development agreement from the CIA’s quasi-corporate venturing unit In-Q-Tel, with both investments being announced on February 28.
Mersive’s techonology is attempting to make beyond High Definition displays simple and affordable, it said. Early on in the company’s development the company stressed its work on military simulation software, but now it has a broader focus.
Razor’s Edge managing directors, Mark Spoto and Rob Painter have joined the Mersive board of directors.
Spoto said: "Mersive’s software injected into what has traditionally been a hardware model will transform complex ‘project-based’ solutions into a broader ‘product-based’ market. Mersive’s unique software-based approach to the delivery of high performance display solutions eliminates the bottleneck caused by legacy display solutions that rely on complex and expensive optical/mechanical technology. Legacy hardware has limited innovation and market growth in the display sector despite advancements in GPU, high performance computing and graphics intensive software.
Painter, said: "We believe that Mersive’s visual computing software is wildly disruptive, relevant and timely for a whole host of applications across both commercial and federal markets, including military simulation and planning platforms, data-intensive analytic environments, command and control centers, and geospatial visualization, just to name a few."
Mersive was founded in 2004. It previously raised $4.6m in Series B financing in 2009 and a series A in July 2006.Hopewell Ventures was the lead investor in the B round with a $4.0m commitment, and was joined by existing investors Adena Ventures, a fund of venture Woodland Venture Management, non-profit corporation the Kentucky Science & Technology Corporation and the Bluegrass Angels Venture Fund, a Kentucky seed funding organisation.
Christopher Jaynes and Stephen Webb set up Mersive 2006 as an offshoot of academic research financed by DARPA, DHS, and NSF, which Jaynes started in 2000.