Blippar

Blippar
Information
Industry	Augmented Reality
Founded	2011
Founder	Ambarish Mitra, Omar Tayeb, Jessica Butcher, Steve Spencer
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Notable Personnel	Phillip Walter (CEO)
Products	Blippbuilder, WebAR SDK, EducatAR, BlippAR Studios
Website	https://www.blippar.com

Blippar is a British augmented reality company founded in 2011 and based in London. It started as a smartphone app that recognized printed products and packaging and opened interactive content when they were scanned, and was known in the early 2010s for campaigns with large consumer brands. After raising more than 130 million US dollars and claiming a valuation above 1 billion US dollars, the original operating company entered administration in December 2018 following a dispute between shareholders over emergency funding.

Existing shareholder Candy Ventures, the venture firm of property developer Nick Candy, bought Blippar's intellectual property in January 2019 and relaunched the business around Blippbuilder, a no-code tool for building browser-based WebAR experiences. The relaunched company later added a WebAR software development kit and acquired the 3D and AR commerce company Plattar. As of October 2026 its website says it has suspended new subscriptions while it upgrades its platform.

Reviewed 4 October 2026. Founding, Layar acquisition, Glass and Cardboard work, funding, December 2018 administration, Candy Ventures relaunch, leadership changes, Companies House records, WebAR SDK and headset support, Plattar acquisition and current website status checked against the cited sources. About review dates.

History

Founding and brand campaigns (2011-2014)

Blippar was founded in 2011 by Ambarish Mitra, Omar Tayeb, Jessica Butcher and Steve Spencer. It launched on Android and iOS in August 2011 with a Cadbury promotion in which scanning the chocolate maker's packaging opened an AR game. Users photographed printed or other display advertising with the Blippar app, which then opened interactive brand content. Its campaigns included Kit Kat wrappers and Guinness. By 2014 the company was backed by Qualcomm Ventures.

In June 2014 Blippar confirmed that it had acquired Layar, a Netherlands-based AR browser company founded in 2009 that had raised about 17 million US dollars from investors including Intel Capital. Terms were not disclosed. TechCrunch wrote that the deal made Blippar one of the largest AR players globally.

Smart glasses, VR and visual search (2014-2018)

In 2014 Blippar launched a platform for AR games on Google Glass. In a July 2014 demonstration, players started the games by looking at a printed game poster through the Blippar Glass app; one, Kung Food, had them slash at virtual food flying through 3D space. In October 2015 the company opened an R&D unit called Blippar Lab and released Cardio VR, an educational app for Google Cardboard on Android and iOS in which children entered an animated doctor's office and tried to identify patients' illnesses, controlling the game with head movements.

In early 2016 Blippar raised a 54 million US dollar Series D round led by Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the Malaysian government's investment fund; chief executive Ambarish Mitra said the company aimed to "become a true visual discovery engine for the physical world". The app was rebuilt that year as a visual search tool: users could point a phone at everyday objects, such as a pizza, to get information about them. Blippar then added a feature for identifying famous people from photos, car recognition, and in 2017 an Urban Visual Positioning System based on computer vision, which it extended to indoor spaces in 2018 for location-based AR. At its peak the company had about 300 employees across 14 offices, including about 60 engineers in San Francisco and Mountain View.

In a 2015 Financial Times interview Mitra claimed that Blippar had turned down a 1.5 billion US dollar takeover offer from an unnamed company, and VentureBeat later noted a report that Snap had tried to buy Blippar for around 200 million US dollars. The business was losing money heavily: according to VentureBeat it lost 43 million US dollars in its 2017 financial year, 10 million more than the year before. It raised a further 37 million US dollars in September 2018.

Administration (December 2018)

On 17 December 2018 Paul Appleton and Paul Cooper of David Rubin & Partners were appointed joint administrators of Blippar.com Limited. The administrators said the appointment had arisen "effectively as a result of an alleged dispute over continued funding", and all employees were let go. TechCrunch reported that Khazanah had blocked an emergency injection of 5 million US dollars. Marketing Dive wrote that Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore had diminished Blippar's value proposition as an AR innovator in the preceding years.

Relaunch under Candy Ventures (2019-2024)

On 23 January 2019 Candy Ventures announced that it had acquired Blippar's intellectual property. Mitra stayed on as chief executive, a number of former key team members joined the new company, and it focused on a software-as-a-service AR creation and publishing platform, Blippbuilder. According to trade publication RLI, the purchase covered the company's intellectual property, its various brands and the Blippar trade name, as well as Layar. UK Companies House records show the holding company, Blippar Group Limited, was incorporated on 23 January 2019, with a registered office in Mayfair, London.

On 31 October 2019 Blippar named Faisal Galaria, a former Spotify senior vice president and Gocompare chief strategy and investments officer, as chief executive. Mitra became chief product officer and Preet Prasannan chief technology officer.

In July 2020 Blippar produced the AR launch of the OnePlus Nord smartphone, a 26-minute livestreamed event viewed through a custom OnePlus app on iOS and Android, with a 3D stage and a digital avatar of OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei.

In March 2021 the company closed a 5 million US dollar pre-Series A round co-led by Chroma Ventures (the investment arm of 4J Studios) and West Coast Capital, with Globalive Capital also taking part. Chris van der Kuyl of 4J Studios joined the board.

On 14 December 2022 Blippar promoted Prasannan to chief executive. The company said he had joined Blippar in 2015 to build its technology operations in India and had worked on Blippbuilder and on adding web-based SLAM tracking to its products.

Restructuring and Plattar (2025-2026)

Phillip Walter was appointed a director of Blippar Group Limited on 28 May 2025. The same Companies House register shows Mitra and Prasannan resigning as directors on 11 December 2025. In March 2026, with Walter as chief executive, Blippar announced that it had acquired Plattar, a 3D product configuration and AR commerce platform with its main operations in Australia and New Zealand. Plattar continues as a wholly owned subsidiary led by its chief executive, Rupert Deans. Companies House also lists Chris van der Kuyl as resigning as a director on 22 September 2026.

As of October 2026 the Blippar website states that the company is "upgrading their technology platform architecture and have suspended new subscriptions at this time".

Products

Product	Introduced	Description
Blippar app	2011	Smartphone app that recognized printed products and packaging and opened AR content; rebuilt in 2016 as a visual search tool for everyday objects
Google Glass games	2014	Platform for AR games on Google Glass, started by looking at printed posters
Cardio VR	2015	Educational Google Cardboard app about the human body, for Android and iOS
Urban Visual Positioning System	2017	Computer vision based positioning, extended indoors in 2018
Blippbuilder	2019 (relaunch focus)	No-code, browser-based tool for creating and publishing AR experiences
WebAR SDK	2022	Developer kit for web AR with SLAM surface tracking; free during its beta
Blippbuilder Mobile	2024	Mobile web version of Blippbuilder, used in the phone browser without an app
EducatAR, BlippAR Studios	Current	Education product and the company's advertising service

XR work

Blippar describes Blippbuilder as its no-code creation tool and lists surface tracking, marker recognition and text-based triggers among its platform features. The WebAR SDK launched on 25 January 2022 as a free beta. Blippar said it combined SLAM tracking with environment meshes for floors, walls and ceilings, and that experiences could be deployed to web browsers and to apps including Facebook, TikTok, WeChat and WhatsApp.

In December 2022 Blippar said that WebAR content made in Blippbuilder could be viewed on AR headsets, starting with Magic Leap 2 and, in beta testing, Meta Quest Pro. It gave its creator count at the time as more than 200,000. Blippbuilder Mobile, announced in 2024, moved the editor to phone browsers; Auganix reported that it ran in a web browser with no app required and that published experiences could be viewed on mobile devices and AR headsets.

See also

• Layar
• WebAR
• 8th Wall
• Phone-Powered AR