Matterport

Matterport
Information
Type	Subsidiary of CoStar Group
Industry	3D capture, spatial data, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality
Founded	2011
Founder	Matthew Bell, David Gausebeck, Michael Beebe
Headquarters	Sunnyvale, California, United States
Notable Personnel	R.J. Pittman (CEO, 2018-2025)
Products	Pro 3D Camera, Pro2, Pro3, Capture app, Cortex AI, 3D Showcase
Parent	CoStar Group
Website	https://matterport.com

Matterport is an American 3D spatial data company that makes cameras and cloud software for scanning indoor and outdoor spaces and turning them into navigable 3D models known as digital twins. The company was founded in 2011 in Sunnyvale, California by Matthew Bell, David Gausebeck, and Michael Beebe, and it released its first dedicated camera, the Pro 3D Camera, in 2014.

A Matterport scan produces a 3D model that a viewer can walk through in a web browser, switch to an overhead floor plan, or see as a "dollhouse" cutaway of the whole structure. The same models can be entered in a VR Headset through a web browser or a dedicated app, which is the company's main connection to virtual and augmented reality. By the time it was acquired, the platform held more than 14 million captured spaces totaling over 50 billion square feet across 177 countries, with roughly 1.2 million subscribers.

Matterport went public on the Nasdaq in 2021 through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company and traded under the ticker MTTR. In February 2025 it was acquired by the commercial real estate data company CoStar Group and delisted, and it now operates as a CoStar subsidiary.

History

Founding and early cameras

Matterport was founded in 2011 in Sunnyvale, California. Among its three founders, David Gausebeck is known outside the company as a co-author of the Gausebeck-Levchin test, an early use of CAPTCHA at PayPal. The founders set out to make 3D capture of real interiors cheap and routine, rather than a specialist task requiring survey-grade equipment.

The company shipped its first hardware, the Pro 3D Camera, on March 13, 2014, aimed at real estate agents, contractors, and architects. The camera was sold together with a subscription cloud service that processed the raw scans and a web-based player for viewing the finished models. A successor, the Pro2, followed in 2017 with higher resolution and geotagging, and a lower-cost Pro2 Lite arrived in 2018.

Cloud platform and Cortex AI

In January 2019 Matterport introduced a subscription platform it called Cloud 3.0, built around a machine-learning system named Cortex. Cortex is a computer-vision model that infers 3D depth and geometry from ordinary 2D panoramic photographs, so a space can be reconstructed without a dedicated depth sensor. Matterport has described it as trained on the billions of images and 3D data points in its own library of captured spaces.

Because Cortex can build a model from 2D panoramas, the platform was opened to consumer 360-degree cameras. Matterport added support for the Ricoh Theta V and Z1 and the Insta360 ONE X, which let users capture a space without buying a Pro camera; later additions included the Insta360 ONE RS and X3 and Apple iPhones with a built-in LiDAR scanner (the iPhone 12 Pro and newer).

Public listing

On February 8, 2021, Matterport announced a business combination with Gores Holdings VI, a blank-check company affiliated with The Gores Group. The deal valued the combined company at an enterprise value of about 2.3 billion US dollars (with a total equity value of about 2.9 billion US dollars) and was structured to provide up to 640 million US dollars in gross proceeds, including a 295 million US dollar private placement (PIPE) anchored by investors such as Tiger Global, Fidelity, and BlackRock. The merger closed on July 22, 2021, the company took the name Matterport, Inc., and its stock began trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol MTTR.

Acquisition by CoStar Group

On April 22, 2024, CoStar Group, a provider of commercial real estate information and online marketplaces, agreed to acquire Matterport in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about 1.6 billion US dollars. The acquisition closed on February 28, 2025. Matterport shareholders received 2.75 US dollars in cash plus 0.03552 of a CoStar share for each Matterport share, the company became a wholly owned subsidiary of CoStar, and trading in MTTR was suspended by the Nasdaq.

For its last full year as an independent public company (fiscal 2024), Matterport reported revenue of 169.7 million US dollars, annual recurring revenue of 104.2 million US dollars, about 50.7 billion square feet under management (up 33 percent year over year), 14.1 million spaces under management, and 1.2 million subscribers.

How the technology works

A Matterport capture is a set of overlapping panoramic scans taken from positions throughout a space. Depending on the device, depth comes from a structured-light or LiDAR sensor on a Pro camera, or is inferred by the Cortex AI from a 2D 360-degree camera. The cloud service stitches the scans into a single registered 3D model and a colored point cloud, and generates a measured floor plan.

The finished result is delivered through a viewer the company calls 3D Showcase. A visitor can move between capture points in a first-person walkthrough, jump to a top-down floor plan, or view the "dollhouse," a 3D cutaway that shows the whole building at once. Matterport refers to these models as digital twins, and they are used across the building lifecycle in real estate marketing, construction documentation, facilities management, and insurance.

Pro3 camera

The Pro3, announced on August 30, 2022 at 5,999 US dollars, was Matterport's first camera designed for both indoor and outdoor capture. It pairs a 30-megapixel sensor and a 12-element ultra-wide lens with a LiDAR sensor.

Matterport Pro3 key specifications

Attribute	Specification
Image sensor	30-megapixel, 12-element ultra-wide lens
LiDAR capture rate	100,000 points per second
Capture range	0.5 m to 100 m
Scan time	Less than 20 seconds per 360-degree sweep
Geometry detail	Models can exceed one million polygons (versus a 50,000-polygon limit on the previous camera)
Weight	Under five pounds; about 30 percent smaller and 35 percent lighter than the Pro2
Battery	Removable; full charge in about 3.5 hours
Price at launch	5,999 US dollars

PetaPixel reported that the Pro3 had roughly five times the capture range of the Pro2 and could digitize outdoor scenes that earlier Matterport cameras could not handle well.

Cameras and devices

Product	Released	Capture method	Notes
Pro 3D Camera	2014	Structured light + cameras	First dedicated Matterport camera, sold with a cloud subscription
Pro2	2017	Structured light + cameras	Higher resolution, geotagging
Pro2 Lite	2018	Structured light + cameras	Lower-cost variant
Pro3	2022	LiDAR + 30 MP cameras	Indoor and outdoor; 0.5 m to 100 m range; 5,999 US dollars
Third-party 360 cameras	2019 onward	2D panoramas + Cortex AI	Ricoh Theta V/Z1, Insta360 ONE X/RS/X3; depth inferred by Cortex
iPhone (LiDAR)	2020 onward	Phone LiDAR + Capture app	iPhone 12 Pro and newer, captured through the Matterport Capture app

Virtual and augmented reality

Matterport's link to VR is its viewer, not headset hardware: any captured space can be entered as a room-scale 360-degree environment, which makes the platform one of the larger sources of photoreal, real-world VR content.

The company first added headset viewing on October 3, 2016 with a feature called CoreVR, which let any Matterport 3D space be entered in VR from the web. At launch CoreVR enabled more than 250,000 existing spaces for Google Cardboard and the Samsung Gear VR (powered by Oculus), and shipped a sample gallery of 150 real-world places to visit in VR. Matterport also published a dedicated Gear VR app, VR Showcase, that came preloaded with VR experiences and could download additional public spaces from the Matterport gallery, an arrangement the company compared to a "YouTube for virtual reality."

As standalone headsets replaced phone-based VR, Matterport shifted its viewer to WebXR, which runs in a headset's web browser without a separate app. A user opens a Matterport space in the browser of a supported device and selects "Enter VR." Matterport's support documentation lists the Meta Quest line (Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest Pro, all formerly branded Oculus) and the Apple Vision Pro as devices that can view spaces this way; the older Google Cardboard mode remains available on iOS and Android but is no longer recommended. The VR mode lets a visitor move freely through a space and view any 360-degree panoramas included in the tour, rather than following a fixed path.

The same scan data also supports augmented reality. Because each model carries real-world measurements, Matterport's tools can place dimensioned floor plans and 3D content in context, and the platform exports to formats used by 3D, BIM, and game-engine workflows. The Cortex AI underpins much of this by reconstructing accurate geometry from inexpensive 2D 360 cameras, lowering the cost of producing immersive content.

After the CoStar acquisition, the company positioned its model library as a base for AI-driven digital twins in real estate, combining Matterport's spatial data with CoStar's property analytics. CoStar described Matterport's library as the largest of its kind, citing over 14 million spaces and more than 50 billion square feet digitized across 177 countries.

Reception and use

Matterport became most established in residential and commercial real estate, where its walkthroughs are used in property listings, and it expanded into construction, insurance, and facilities documentation. Trade coverage of the Pro3 from PetaPixel and Inman described it as the company's most capable camera and noted the move to LiDAR and outdoor capture as the main advance over the Pro2. Analysts following the stock noted that the company carried operating losses through its years as a public company even as recurring subscription revenue grew, a backdrop to the CoStar acquisition.