Jaunt VR

Jaunt VR
Information
Type	Private
Industry	Virtual Reality
Founded	May 1, 2013
Founder	Jens Christensen, Arthur van Hoff, Tom Annau
Headquarters	Palo Alto, California, U.S. (later San Mateo, California)
Notable Personnel	Jens Christensen (CEO until 2016), George Kliavkoff (CEO 2016-2018), Mitzi Reaugh (CEO from 2018)
Products	ONE, Jaunt VR app, Jaunt XR Platform
Website	jauntvr.com

Jaunt VR (also called Jaunt, and later Jaunt XR) is a virtual reality company founded in Palo Alto, CA in 2013. The company described itself as a pioneer of storytelling through cinematic virtual reality, and it built its own 360-degree camera systems, post-production software, a content studio and a multi-platform viewing app. In April 2015 Jaunt launched Jaunt Studios, a division dedicated to live-action virtual reality filmmaking based in Los Angeles. On June 30, 2015, Jaunt unveiled a 360-degree VR camera system codenamed NEO, which it later named ONE. Jaunt called it the first professional-grade camera system designed specifically for capturing cinematic VR experiences.

On September 21, 2015, Jaunt VR announced that it had raised 65 million dollars in venture capital in a round led by Disney, Evolution Media Partners and China Media Capital. By 2016 the company had raised a total of 100 million dollars. In October 2018 Jaunt laid off a significant portion of its staff, wound down its VR products and content services, and refocused on augmented reality and its XR Capture volumetric video technology. On September 30, 2019, Verizon acquired Jaunt's software, technology and certain other assets for an undisclosed price.

Reviewed 27 September 2026. Checked every funding, leadership, product, camera-spec, app and acquisition claim against its cited source (Jaunt's archived NEO release, TechCrunch, Road to VR, UploadVR, VentureBeat, LA Business Journal, China Daily, Engadget, Next Reality, GlobeNewswire). About review dates.

History

Founding and early funding

Jaunt was founded in 2013. In December 2013 TechCrunch identified Jens Christensen, who had launched Ellerdale (acquired by Flipboard in 2010), as CEO; Arthur van Hoff, formerly CTO at Flipboard, as CTO; and Tom Annau, previously a senior software engineering manager at Google, as vice president of engineering. The same month, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) invested 350,000 US dollars in the company, which then described its technology as combining computational photography, statistical algorithms, massively parallel processing, hardware and virtual reality.

In April 2014 Jaunt announced 6.8 million US dollars in funding from Redpoint Ventures, Peter Gotcher, Blake Krikorian, SV Angel and Sky. At that point it was capturing video with a custom spherical camera that had 32 lenses and was assembled from off-the-shelf parts, and it was writing its own software to stitch and re-render the footage for VR headsets. Van Hoff described the company as "a studio for VR" offering end-to-end solutions.

A 27.8 million US dollar Series B round followed in August 2014. It was led by Highland Capital Partners, with Google Ventures joining and earlier investors Redpoint Ventures, Sky, Peter Gotcher and Blake Krikorian taking part, which brought Jaunt's total funding to more than 34 million US dollars. Road to VR reported that the company called its product "the first full-stack hardware and software solution for cinematic VR" and intended its content to be device agnostic, playing on the Oculus Rift and Sony's Project Morpheus through custom apps. One of its early productions was The Mission VR, a World War II short film directed by Matthew Gratzner with New Deal Studios.

Jaunt Studios, NEO and the Series C

Jaunt announced Jaunt Studios on April 28, 2015, and hired Cliff Plumer, former CEO of Digital Domain and former CTO of Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic, to run it. Former Lucasfilm COO David Anderman joined as chief business officer and Miles Perkins as vice president of marketing communications. The first announced project was a deal with Condé Nast Entertainment for two VR series.

The NEO camera announcement on June 30, 2015 said the system was Jaunt's fifth generation of camera hardware and the result of two and a half years of research, prototyping and field testing, with the first units due to reach partners in August 2015. In July 2015 Nokia named Jaunt as a partner for its OZO camera; Jaunt said it would offer the OZO for its own projects and support post-production of OZO footage.

The 65 million dollar Series C of September 2015 also included ProSiebenSat.1 Group, Axel Springer, Madison Square Garden Co., Google Ventures, Highland Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Sky and SV Angel. Evolution Media Partners is a partnership of Evolution Media Capital, TPG Growth and Participant Media. According to the Los Angeles Business Journal, Jaunt had raised about 35 million dollars before the round and planned to spend the new money on content production, camera hardware, software tools and a production studio in Santa Monica. Then-CEO Christensen said the company was "very much focused on building up a library of high-quality VR experiences for consumers."

Leadership changes and Jaunt China

Christensen left the company in early June 2016, and van Hoff served as interim CEO during a search that lasted several months. On September 12, 2016, Jaunt named George Kliavkoff, previously co-president of Hearst's Entertainment & Syndication unit, as CEO, and van Hoff returned to the CTO role.

In June 2016 Shanghai Media Group (SMG) announced a strategic investment in Jaunt. SMG and its subsidiary Shanghai Oriental Pearl Media became investors in the company, and SMG, Jaunt and Whaley Technology, the technology arm of China Media Capital, agreed to form a joint venture called Jaunt China to produce and distribute VR content for advertising, film and exhibitions in China. SMG said it would allocate about 200 million yuan (32 million US dollars) from its SMG Cultural Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fund to VR content production.

Pivot to augmented reality

Kliavkoff stepped down as CEO effective October 1, 2018, and was replaced by Mitzi Reaugh, Jaunt's vice president of global business development and strategy. By then the company had moved from producing cinematic VR films to selling platform tools; its Jaunt XR Platform let partners distribute augmented, virtual and mixed reality assets through their own apps and channels. Jaunt expanded the platform in August 2018 and in September showed a prototype volumetric video system for AR-compatible smartphones. It also acquired Personify's "Teleporter" volumetric video streaming technology and the engineers behind it.

On October 15, 2018, Jaunt said it was "restructuring the company, resulting in letting go of a significant portion of our staff." It wound down a number of VR products and content services and said it would focus "exclusively on Augmented Reality and our XR Capture technology," keeping an engineering team in San Mateo and the new team in Chicago. The Jaunt China joint venture was not affected. In November 2018 Road to VR, citing VentureBeat, reported that Jaunt was in talks with several parties interested in buying the intellectual property of its cinematic VR business, including Spinview Global. Van Hoff's tenure as CTO ended in October 2018; he stayed on as an adviser until the end of that year and later joined Apple.

Acquisition by Verizon

Jaunt XR announced on September 30, 2019 that Verizon had acquired its software, technology and certain assets, and that Jaunt would help transfer selected software and technology during a short transition period. The announcement described the San Mateo-based company as working on the creation and distribution of volumetric video of humans using machine learning, and listed its investors as Evolution Media Partners, CMC, Highland Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, SMG, Axel Springer, The Walt Disney Company, The Madison Square Garden Company and Sky. Reaugh said: "The Jaunt team has built leading-edge software and we are excited for its next chapter with Verizon." Road to VR reported that Jaunt had most recently been designing and training neural networks for real-time human pose estimation and body part segmentation, used to produce volumetric videos and 3D models of people for AR and VR devices. VentureBeat noted that the deal gave Verizon volumetric capture tools that Jaunt had presented as a way to demonstrate the value of 5G networks.

ONE

ONE, formerly known as NEO, is a professional camera system designed and built to capture fully immersive, 360-degree cinematic VR experiences. Unveiled on June 30, 2015, ONE was described by Jaunt as the first professional-grade camera system specifically designed for capturing cinematic VR experiences. Road to VR reported in September 2015 that the camera was not for sale and would be made available only to partners of Jaunt Studios.

ONE's features include:

• High quality, high resolution, full 360° capture

• Custom optics specifically designed for 3D light field capture

• Large format sensors with superior low-light performance

• High dynamic range (HDR) imaging

• Fully synchronized global shutter sensor array

• Time-lapse and high frame-rate capture

• Compact and weatherproof form factor

• 360 degree industrial design by LUNAR

• Extensive tool set for configuration, rendering, and asset management

A spec sheet shown at Oculus Connect in September 2015 listed two models, both built around 24 sensors:

Specification	J1-24G	J1-24R
Sensors	1 and 1.2 inch "native HD" global shutter sensors	1 inch 20 MP rolling shutter system
Frame rate	Up to 120 FPS, time lapse	Up to 60 FPS, time lapse
Maximum ISO	3200	3200
SNR at ISO 800	36 dB	29 dB
Dynamic range	11 stops per sensor module	11 stops per sensor module
Optics	Custom, 130 degrees diagonal, f/2.9	Custom, 130 degrees diagonal, f/2.9
Resolution	8K x 4K per eye	Up to 32K x 16K per eye
Availability (as stated in 2015)	August 2015, ramping up in 2016	Starting early 2016

Jaunt Studios

Jaunt changed its workflow in 2015 so that Jaunt Studios partners could edit VR content with third-party post-production tools such as Avid, Premiere, Final Cut Pro X, Nuke, RV, Shotgun, Maya, 3Ds Max, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, Assimilate's Scratch, Lustre and others.

Jaunt Studios supported Jaunt's own camera systems, such as ONE, as well as third-party systems such as the OZO. Jaunt described its content as device agnostic, made for multiple VR Platforms and Devices.

Jaunt VR app

Jaunt distributed its content through its own multi-platform app, Jaunt VR. In December 2016 the app launched on PlayStation VR with access to about 150 titles, including the animated short Invasion, CBS' JPL Mars 2020, Shaq Goes to Cuba, Zombie Purge and the Pure McCartney experience. With that release the app was available on PlayStation VR, iOS, Android, Gear VR, Google Daydream, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and desktop web browsers.

See also

• Cinematic VR
• 360 Video
• Volumetric video
• OZO