Omi, the French SaaS software for modelling and rendering 3D photo and video for brands, today announces it has raised €6m in Seed funding.
The round was led by Dawn Capital, Europe’s largest B2B technology investor, with participation from a range of angel investors including Founders Future’s Marc Ménasé who led the previous round, Zenly cofounder Alexis Bonillo, Deezer founder Daniel Marhely and Voodoo cofounder Laurent Ritter.
There was also participation from Pareto Holdings, Financière Saint James (Veepee.com’s cofounder family office), Motier Ventures (Galeries Lafayette family office) and Famille C Venture (Clarins family office).
Omi’s market-leading photo-realistic 3D technology empowers brands and marketers to virtualize their products and create photos and videos of their products in minutes, with no skills and at low cost.
The company intends to establish itself as the reference in the creation of visual product content for e-commerce advertising and to support the arrival of brands in Web3 and metaverses. This funding will enable it to accelerate the development of its R&D, recruit new talent, and deploy its international presence.
“Omi saves marketers time and money but also opens up many business opportunities.” said Hugo Borensztein, CEO and co-founder of Omi. “By responding to the current content creation challenges faced by brands and empowering them to easily integrate into Web3 experiences such as Augmented Reality or Metaverses, we are truly shaping the future of product marketing. The next challenges – smart-contract, distribution of 3D content in NFT, 3D modelling of the entire collections of major brands – are exciting technological and cultural challenges and we are delighted to bring our know- how.”
Omi was designed and created by brothers Hugo and Paul Borensztein during the first lockdown in 2020. Hugo is an ex-Director of Southern Europe Operations at Facebook and Instagram, and Paul is a former Software Engineer at Zenly and Payfit. Together, they identified the considerable post- pandemic increase in brands’ content requirements – on all media, but particularly for online uses.
After only two years, Omi’s best-in-class proprietary technology already has more than 200 references – from start-ups to international brands including Nestle and Manucurist- as well as strategic partnerships like the one forged with Meta in 2021.
Ségolène Watine, D2C Business Manager at Nestlé Cereal Partners Worldwide said: “Omi’s level of sophistication in producing world class visual assets is a true game changer, especially in a world where social media has become so influential, but content becomes quickly outdated. Now we can feed our editorial calendar with new and fresh visuals, without the new need for physical production, in a way that doesn’t cost too much in money and time.”
Laurent Solly, Vice President at Meta said: “Omi is the future of content marketing. Their solution is an absolute must-have for marketers – big or small – making it seamless to generate ultra-realistic content and match the content volume requirements of today, but also to leverage Web3 marketing opportunities.
“Hugo and Paul have done an incredible job over the last two years. In an increasingly content-hungry world, Omi is building the Canva for 3D digital content production to empower marketers and address one of the biggest challenges for modern brands.” added Dan Chaplin at Dawn Capital. “The beauty of their 3D product models is that they can be re-used again and again in a wide range of content mediums from photos, to videos to AR/VR experiences. Omi’s customer are elated with the solution, and with the metaverse emerging as one of the most exciting trends in tech for the future, we believe that they are perfectly poised to be a key player in the digital content landscape for years to come.”
Omi also plans to use the funding to expand into other regions, with a focus on Southern Europe and the UK in particular, but in time extending beyond Europe to the United States.
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