Upskill
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| Upskill | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Industry | Enterprise augmented reality software |
| Founded | 2010 |
| Founder | Brian Ballard (co-founder) |
| Headquarters | Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States |
| Notable Personnel | Brian Ballard (co-founder and CEO), Jay Kim (chief strategy officer), Magid Abraham (executive chairman from 2016) |
| Products | Skylight, EyeSight |
| Parent | TeamViewer (from 2021) |
| Website | https://upskill.io |
Upskill (known as APX Labs until January 2017) is an American enterprise augmented reality software company, acquired by TeamViewer in 2021, that developed Skylight, a platform for running work applications on smart glasses, Microsoft HoloLens and mobile devices for factory, warehouse and field-service workers.[1][2] The company began as a military smart-glasses software developer spun out of Battlefield Telecommunications Systems and moved into commercial work from 2012.[3][4] Its customers included Boeing, which used Skylight on Google Glass for wire harness assembly, and GE.[1][5][6]
Its chief strategy officer, Jay Kim, is credited with coining the term assisted reality for the non-immersive wearable form of augmented reality used on many industrial smart glasses.[7] TeamViewer announced its acquisition of Upskill on 2 March 2021, and Skylight was later folded into TeamViewer Frontline as Frontline Apps.[8][9]
History
APX Labs and military smart glasses
APX Labs gave 2010 as its starting year in its own releases, and TeamViewer also dates Upskill's founding to 2010.[10][9] It was spun out of Battlefield Telecommunications Systems (BTS), a Maryland company, and won its first contracts in 2011.[3][11] Brian Ballard, a co-founder, led the company as chief executive.[11] In 2014 it was based in Herndon, Virginia.[11]
According to APX's own 2015 account on the blog of the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA), the company was selected to build software for US Army smart glasses between 2011 and 2013. Its biometrics application, nicknamed "Terminator Vision", used the glasses' camera to capture faces in a soldier's view, sent the data to a server to identify the people, and showed the result hands-free.[4] TechCrunch reported in 2014 that APX sold wearable software to the military for connecting soldiers to unmanned aerial vehicles and for telemedicine by field medics, and that military work still made up about 90 percent of its revenue at the time.[3]
The same account says APX broadened its software to the non-military market in 2012. Late that year it commissioned several prototype headsets; the ones it described used two display modules, each with a microdisplay, a simple 50:50 beam splitter and an illumination source. In February 2013 it fitted an Epson Moverio BT-100 with a 9-axis inertial measurement unit and a 3D-printed module holding a 5-megapixel camera and a microphone. That prototype was demonstrated at the YouTube Sandbox at Google I/O 2013.[4]
Skylight and venture funding
APX's commercial product was Skylight, a client and server system that replaced the user interface of the glasses' Android software with its own and managed deployment, connectivity and networking through Skylight servers.[3] In April 2014 APX announced a US$10 million Series A round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), its first institutional financing, which brought its total funding to US$15.7 million according to VentureBeat. VentureBeat also reported that the recently announced Skylight 2.0 added feedback from a remote supervisor or expert and visual beacons that guide a wearer to a location. The software then ran on Google Glass and the Epson Moverio.[3][11] APX was a founding partner of Google's Glass at Work program in April 2014.[4]
APX worked with several smart-glasses makers in this period. Its own timeline lists the Vuzix M100 (December 2013), for which APX had an official partnership integrating the fourth release of Skylight, and the Epson Moverio BT-200 (March 2014), which integrated Skylight. APX also demonstrated an enterprise application with SAP data on Sony's SmartEyeglass at CES 2015.[4] In March 2015 Recon Instruments announced that its Recon Jet eyewear would run Skylight for workers in industries such as manufacturing, field service and oil and gas.[10]
On 18 November 2015 TechCrunch reported a US$13 million round led by NEA, with CNF Investments, GE Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and SineWave Ventures among the investors, which brought APX's total to US$29 million. TechCrunch described Skylight as vendor-agnostic and said it supported Google Glass and Sony's smart glasses, among others.[12]
In June 2016 the company announced that the World Economic Forum had named it one of its 30 Technology Pioneers for 2016, and that Magid Abraham and Linda Abraham, co-founders of comScore and early investors, would become executive chairman and vice chairman.[13]
Rename to Upskill
On 16 January 2017 APX Labs announced that it had changed its name to Upskill, saying the new name better reflected its mission "to elevate the impact of people in the connected industrial workplace". The announcement listed Boeing, Johnson & Johnson, Rio Tinto, Jabil, Shell, Bell Helicopter, Lockheed Martin and GE as customers, and said Skylight had raised Boeing's wire harness assembly productivity by 25 percent while reducing errors to "virtually zero".[1]
In April 2017 Upskill announced a Series B round with the venture arms of Boeing and GE, which it described as its two largest customers, along with existing investors NEA and SineWave Ventures; the amount was not disclosed.[6] The release reported customer results including a 46 percent productivity gain for GE Healthcare warehouse workers on first use and a 34 percent gain for a GE Renewable Energy technician wiring wind turbine top boxes.[6]
Pristine acquisition
On 9 May 2017 Upskill announced that it had acquired Pristine, an Austin, Texas company whose main product, EyeSight, provided "see what I see" video streaming so remote experts could assist field workers. EyeSight ran on smart glasses as well as Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad and Android devices. Pristine's chief executive, Peter Evans, became an executive vice president of Upskill, and the deal gave Upskill its third US office, in Austin.[14] In a June 2017 interview with AREA, Kim described EyeSight as "a 100-percent cloud-delivered solution" for video remote collaboration.[15]
Glass Enterprise Edition and Skylight updates
In July 2017 Upskill announced a GE Aviation pilot in which mechanics used Skylight on Google Glass Enterprise Edition together with a Wi-Fi-connected torque wrench. The release reported an average efficiency gain of 8 to 12 percent and said GE was using Skylight in seven projects at 12 locations. Jay Kothari, project lead for Glass, described Upskill in the release as a Glass partner since the Explorer program.[16]
An October 2017 Skylight release added a drag-and-drop Application Builder, Skylight Connect for linking to company databases without code, a software development kit, and Skylight Live for streaming the wearer's view to others.[17]
On 6 March 2018 Upskill said it had raised US$17.2 million from new investors Accenture and Cisco Investments, with continued participation from Boeing HorizonX, GE Ventures and NEA. It also announced a strategic alliance with Accenture.[18]
Mixed reality and mobile
Upskill opened a US early access program for Skylight on Microsoft HoloLens on 9 October 2018, at no extra cost to Skylight customers. The HoloLens version let workers place and resize content in space, view several windows at once, open PDF work instructions and drawings without re-authoring them, and navigate with hand gestures or head gaze.[19] At Augmented World Expo Europe on 18 October 2018 the company extended the program worldwide and listed the RealWear HMT-1 and HMT-1Z1 and the Epson Moverio BT-350 ANSI Edition as devices added that year.[20]
In February 2019 Upskill announced that it was bringing the full Skylight feature set to Android and iOS phones and tablets; the iOS app was available that day and the Android app was due in Google Play in March.[2] In a company blog post on 29 May 2019, about a week after Google announced Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2, Kim wrote that the device was available to Skylight customers and that early testing showed the runtime of Skylight Live remote assistance increasing by a factor of eight.[21] Skylight for Microsoft HoloLens 2 was announced on 7 November 2019, the day Microsoft said the headset was shipping.[22]
Acquisition by TeamViewer
TeamViewer announced on 2 March 2021 that it had acquired Upskill, without disclosing the price. TeamViewer said Upskill had offices in Tysons Corner, Virginia, and Austin, Texas, which it planned to keep, and named Boeing, Merck KGaA and the American Bureau of Shipping as customers.[8][23] The deal followed TeamViewer's 2020 purchase of Ubimax. TeamViewer's acquisitions page states that Skylight "has been integrated into TeamViewer Frontline as Frontline Apps".[9]
Products
| Product | Introduced | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Skylight | By 2014 (version 2.0 announced by April 2014) | Platform for building and deploying hands-free work applications on smart glasses, later also on HoloLens and mobile devices; integrated into TeamViewer Frontline as Frontline Apps[11][9] |
| Skylight for HoloLens | October 2018 (US early access) | Mixed reality client with spatial content placement and multi-window viewing; HoloLens 2 support from November 2019[19][22] |
| Skylight Live | October 2017 | Live video streaming of the wearer's view for remote assistance[17] |
| EyeSight | Acquired May 2017 (from Pristine) | Cloud-delivered "see what I see" video remote collaboration for smart glasses and mobile devices[14][15] |
XR work
Upskill's software targeted smart glasses and, from 2018, mixed reality headsets. Late in 2019 its supported device list named Glass Enterprise Edition, the Vuzix M300, the RealWear HMT-1 and HMT-1Z1, Microsoft HoloLens 2, the Epson Moverio BT-350 and ANSI Edition, and iOS and Android devices.[24] One documented deployment was Boeing's wiring work. Randall MacPherson, senior manager of Boeing's Electrical Strategic Fabrication Center in Mesa, Arizona, said in 2016 that the technology had produced "significant productivity increases" and better first-time quality in the company's wiring harness facility.[13] In a 2018 release, Boeing chief information officer Ted Colbert said multiple Boeing aircraft manufacturing lines were benefiting from Skylight and that Boeing wanted to extend AR to its services business.[18]
Kim used the term assisted reality to distinguish this kind of hands-free information display from fully registered AR. In the 2017 AREA interview he said the "fundamental value proposition" of assisted reality was "delivering a hands-free user interface to the data and assets already available to industrial workers".[15] AWE's 2019 speaker biography states that Kim "coined the term 'assisted reality'",[7] and Kim himself described assisted reality in 2019 as a category "that Glass enabled and Upskill named".[21]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "APX Labs Announces Corporate Name Change to Upskill". Upskill. 2017-01-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20190723044903/https://upskill.io/resources/press/apx-labs-announces-corporate-name-change-upskill/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Upskill Empowers Today's Connected Worker with More Experiences Across More Devices". Upskill. 2019-02-20. https://web.archive.org/web/20190701235722/https://upskill.io/resources/press/upskill-empowers-connected-worker-more-experiences-more-devices/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Jonathan Shieber (2014-04-22). "APX Labs Gets $10M From NEA For Enterprise-Friendly Wearables". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/22/apx-labs-gets-10m-from-nea-for-enterprise-friendly-wearables/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 "APX Labs' Milestones in Enterprise Smart Glasses". AREA blog (post by APX Labs). Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance. 2015-05-13. https://thearea.org/apx-labs-milestones-in-enterprise-smart-glasses/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ IANS. "How Google Glass helps Boeing build airplanes". Gulf News. https://gulfnews.com/business/aviation/how-google-glass-helps-boeing-build-airplanes-1.1863747. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Upskill Raises Series B Funding from Boeing Ventures and GE Ventures". AviationPros (Upskill press release). 2017-04-05. https://www.aviationpros.com/airport-business/airport-infrastructure-operations/airport-technology/press-release/12322320/upskill-raises-series-b-funding-from-boeing-ventures-and-ge-ventures. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Jay Kim". AWE USA 2019. Augmented World Expo. https://www.awexr.com/usa-2019/speakers/635-jay-kim. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "TeamViewer Acquires US-Based Augmented Reality Software Pioneer Upskill to Strengthen Global Leadership in Enterprise AR Solutions Across All Verticals". PR Newswire. TeamViewer. 2021-03-02. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/teamviewer-acquires-us-based-augmented-reality-software-pioneer-upskill-to-strengthen-global-leadership-in-enterprise-ar-solutions-across-all-verticals-301238237.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 "Acquisitions". TeamViewer. https://www.teamviewer.com/en/special/acquisitions/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Recon Instruments And APX Labs Announce Partnership". PR Newswire. APX Labs. 2015-03-16. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/recon-instruments-and-apx-labs-announce-partnership-300050781.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Barry Levine (2014-04-22). "APX Labs nabs $10 million to get Google Glass ready for business". VentureBeat. https://web.archive.org/web/20190916100232/https://venturebeat.com/2014/04/22/apx-labs-nabs-10-million-to-get-google-glass-ready-for-business/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ Ron Miller (2015-11-18). "APX Labs Grabs $13 Million For Enterprise Smart Glasses Platform". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/18/apx-labs-grabs-13-million-for-enterprise-smart-glasses-platform/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Brian Ballard (2016-06-27). "Upskill named Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum". Upskill. https://web.archive.org/web/20191117115418/https://upskill.io/resources/blog/upskill-named-techpioneer/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Augmented Reality Industry Leader Upskill Acquires Pristine". Upskill. 2017-05-09. https://web.archive.org/web/20191117132905/https://upskill.io/resources/press/augmented-reality-industry-leader-upskill-acquires-pristine/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 "Jay Kim of Upskill on the Pristine Acquisition and the Future of AR". AREA (Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance). 2017-06-12. https://thearea.org/jay-kim-upskill-pristine-acquisition-future-ar/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Upskill Unveils GE Aviation Smart Glasses Pilot Featuring Glass Enterprise Edition". PR Newswire. Upskill. 2017-07-18. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/upskill-unveils-ge-aviation-smart-glasses-pilot-featuring-glass-enterprise-edition-300489769.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 Ron Miller (2017-10-10). "Upskill Skylight update aimed at bringing augmented reality to mainstream". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/10/upskill-skylight-update-aimed-at-bringing-augmented-reality-to-mainstream/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 "Enterprise Augmented Reality Leader Upskill Closes $17.2M with Strategic Investments from Four Industry Leaders". Upskill. 2018-03-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20180423104022/https://upskill.io/resources/press/upskill-fundraises-17-2/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 "Upskill Unveils Skylight for Microsoft HoloLens to Unlock Mixed Reality Experiences". Upskill. 2018-10-09. https://web.archive.org/web/20190112095912/https://upskill.io/resources/press/skylight-for-hololens/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Upskill Brings Enhanced Multi-Device and Augmented Reality Experiences to AWE Europe". Upskill. 2018-10-18. https://web.archive.org/web/20190723045713/https://upskill.io/resources/press/skylight-hololens-realwear-epson/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 21.0 21.1 Jay Kim (2019-05-29). "The New Glass Enterprise Edition 2 and Skylight". Upskill. https://web.archive.org/web/20190820100559/https://upskill.io/resources/blog/new-glass-enterprise-edition-two/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 Chris Delvizis (2019-11-07). "Skylight for HoloLens 2 is Here". Upskill. https://web.archive.org/web/20191117133437/https://upskill.io/resources/blog/skylight-for-hololens-2-is-here/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "TeamViewer acquires US-based Augmented Reality software company Upskill to strengthen its enterprise AR offering". Auganix. 2021-03-04. https://www.auganix.org/teamviewer-acquires-us-based-augmented-reality-software-company-upskill-to-strengthen-its-enterprise-ar-offering. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Augmented Reality Devices for Enterprise". Upskill. https://web.archive.org/web/20191208111552/https://upskill.io/skylight/augmented-reality-devices/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.