The corporate venturing unit of US-based chipmaker Intel has invested $21m to take a 10% stake in eye tracking and control company Tobii.
Intel Capital joined venture firms Amadeus Capital Partners, Northzone Ventures and Investor Growth Capital, a venture unit of the Sweden listed investment trust, as a backer of the company, Intel confirmed today, after news provider Computer Sweden reported the fundraising on Thursday.
Marcos Battisti, managing director for Intel Capital, Western Europe and Israel, said: "Intel Capital believes that eye-tracking could form an important part of man-machine interface. Tobii is a market segment leader in eye-tracking and a leading candidate to enable the latest generation of user-interface technology", said
Ian Cooper, investment director at Intel Capital, who is joining Tobii’s board of directors, said: "I am looking forward to working with Tobii to build the leader in consumer-focused eye-tracking."
Joel Fisch, director of business development at Intel’s architecture development group, said: "Eye-gaze tracking holds great promise as a novel method for user/machine interaction. Working closely with Tobii, we hope to bring the benefit of this new technology to personal computing."
Tobii’s eye tracking technology allows computer to know where users are looking.
In 2009 Tobii raised €16m ($21m) from the other three venture firms besides Intel Capital. In 2007 the company raised $14M from Investor Growth Capital.
In January, Amadeus co-founder Hermann Hauser and Arne Almerfors, former chief executive of infrared camera company Flir Systems, joined Tobii’s board. The pair replaced Jeppe Zink, formerly representative of Amadeus on Tobii’s board and Göran Gezelius, who has joined the board of AMF, a Swedish life insurance company.
The idea behind Tobii’s technology came from a research project at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Tobii was founded in 2001.