Virtualitics

Virtualitics
Information
Industry	Artificial intelligence, data analytics, defense software
Founded	2016
Founder	Michael Amori, Ciro Donalek, George Djorgovski
Headquarters	Pasadena, California, United States
Notable Personnel	Michael Amori (CEO), Ciro Donalek (CTO)
Products	Virtualitics Immersive Platform (VIP), Virtualitics AI Platform, Virtualitics Iris
Website	https://virtualitics.com

Virtualitics (Virtualitics Inc.) is an American data analytics and artificial intelligence company based in Pasadena, California. It was founded in 2016 by Michael Amori, Ciro Donalek and George Djorgovski to commercialize research on immersive data visualization carried out at Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), under an exclusive license from Caltech.

The company's first product, the Virtualitics Immersive Platform (VIP), combined machine learning with 3D plots of multidimensional data that users could explore in a virtual reality headset or on a desktop, including in a shared virtual office where several users met as avatars. In 2023 Amori told TechCrunch that the company had partnered with the US defense and national security community since 2017, and he credited newly acquired government customers, including the Department of Defense, with its recent revenue growth. In 2026 it describes itself as "the Mission AI company" and sells AI readiness software for maintenance, supply and personnel planning to defense customers.

Reviewed 21 October 2026. Founding, research origins, funding rounds, defense contracts, products, patent and 2026 status checked against every cited source. About review dates.

History

Research origins at Caltech and JPL

The company's technology grew out of work by Djorgovski, an astrophysicist who directed Caltech's Center for Data-Driven Discovery, and Donalek, a computational staff scientist at Caltech. According to NASA, Scott Davidoff of JPL had been experimenting with virtual reality using imagery from the Curiosity rover, while Donalek and Djorgovski were studying immersive environments for visualizing scientific data; the three then worked together on software that used 3D views to show relationships between data points.

In a 2014 paper for the IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Donalek, Djorgovski, Davidoff and colleagues described this research. The group first experimented with scientific uses of the virtual worlds Second Life and OpenSimulator, and later with an OpenSimulator world called vCaltech, where mapping data values to the XYZ position, shape, size, color and transparency of each point gave an eight-dimensional data display. They then built a Unity-based prototype visualizer called iViz, which could run standalone or in a web browser, supported the Oculus Rift as a display and the Leap Motion sensor and Kinect as input devices, and let several users explore the same data together, either independently or following one user's view.

Founding and venture funding (2016-2018)

Amori, who had previously managed a 25-person data science team at Deutsche Bank, joined the project in 2016 and became CEO. NASA's account names Donalek, Djorgovski and Amori as the founders, with Davidoff in an advisory role; the company's leadership page lists Davidoff on its board of advisors as a co-founder. Amori told Built In that the team "actually started out just wanting to do data visualization, so there was no machine learning or artificial intelligence,". Built In reported that the project, first aimed at visualizing astronomical data, began to change after Amori joined and saw wider applications for it. SiliconANGLE reported in January 2017 that the startup, then in closed beta, combined VR and augmented reality with machine learning for big data analysis.

In April 2017 Virtualitics announced a 4.4 million US dollar Series A round led by The Venture Reality Fund. TechCrunch described the product as a sort of "Excel for VR" and reported that a closed beta with business customers including Accenture would start later that month, with pricing per device. Built In reported 11 full-time employees in Pasadena in May 2017. A 7 million US dollar Series B round led by Centricus, with The VR Fund also taking part, followed in February 2018 and brought total funding to 11.4 million US dollars, according to Road to VR.

Move into defense (2020 onward)

In an April 2021 release, Virtualitics said it had received the Air Force's first-ever Strategic Award in 2020, had been named one of 21 "big bets" the Department of Defense was making on emerging technologies, and had won 13 separate AI contracts with the Air Force, Navy and Army. The same release announced an 18 million US dollar round led by North Sound Ventures, with Centricus and The Venture Reality Fund returning; the company also called this round a Series B.

In November 2022 Air Force Global Strike Command awarded Virtualitics an AI software contract to improve aircraft availability and mission readiness. Under it, the company was to set up a Center of Excellence, and its software was to help predict maintenance and manpower needs and manage inventory for aircraft and missile systems.

On 10 August 2023 the company announced a 37 million US dollar Series C round led by Smith Point Capital, with Citi and advisory clients of The Hillman Company also investing. TechCrunch reported that the round brought total funding to 67 million US dollars, that the company had 76 employees, and that year-over-year revenue had risen 370 percent, growth Amori credited to new government customers. NASA's 2023 spinoff article said the software was used most often in banking, retail and medical research; Donalek told NASA that many of the company's 60 employees came from JPL or Caltech.

In September 2024 Virtualitics said it had been selected as one of several industry partners on a multi-year, 975 million US dollar indefinite-delivery contract from the Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office. The following month it announced a five-year Air Force SBIR Phase III contract worth more than 46 million US dollars to deploy its Integrated Readiness Optimization applications to maintenance and sustainment units.

On 7 October 2026 the company announced Impact Level 5 and Impact Level 6 authorizations to operate for its AI-Native Readiness Platform, the latter covering classified workloads on Secret networks; it said it used Palantir FedStart for the IL6 process. On 20 October 2026 it announced a renewed contract with the US Marine Corps' 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, extending its support at Marine Corps Air Station New River to six of the seven MV-22 Osprey squadrons there, with the seventh expected to join after returning from deployment. As of October 2026, Amori is CEO and Donalek is CTO; Djorgovski sits on the board of directors.

Funding rounds

Announced	Round	Amount (US$)	Lead investor	Other named investors
April 2017	Series A	4.4 million	The Venture Reality Fund	None named
February 2018	Series B	7 million	Centricus	The VR Fund, private investors
April 2021	Series B (company's term)	18 million	North Sound Ventures	Centricus, The Venture Reality Fund
August 2023	Series C	37 million	Smith Point Capital	Citi, advisory clients of The Hillman Company

Products

Virtualitics Immersive Platform

The Virtualitics Immersive Platform (VIP) was the company's main product in its first years. In an April 2017 hands-on, UploadVR's Ian Hamilton used it on an Oculus Rift while Amori, wearing a headset in a nearby room, joined him in a shared virtual space and used Oculus Touch controllers to make selections from spreadsheets he had loaded. In the demonstration, an algorithm searched a 1990 US census dataset of about 120 columns for factors correlated with crime rate and plotted cities as points in a 3D cube, and selecting a point opened a web page about that community without leaving VR.

A new version released in March 2019 listed machine learning tools, multidimensional visualization, VR support and a Python API for connecting VIP to data scientists' own tools among its features. NVIDIA's blog described two parts of VIP in 2019: a Smart Mapping tool that ranked features by their influence on a chosen key performance indicator and generated a visualization automatically, and a Shared Virtual Office (SVO) for desktop and VR. The software was built on the Unity engine and worked with Oculus and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. VIP 2020, released in January 2020, added a Network Graph package that rendered relationships in unstructured data as 3D network graphs, and let desktop and VR users analyze data together in real time.

Later products

The company later sold the Virtualitics AI Platform, which its 2021 release described as a SaaS data analytics and 3D visualization platform. TechCrunch reported in 2023 that its visualizations could still be viewed in VR and AR. In 2026 the company lists Virtualitics Iris, AI Applications and an AI Platform, with applications for maintenance, materiel, personnel, supply chain and strategic planning.

XR work

Virtualitics pitched virtual reality as a business intelligence tool. As Amori put it to UploadVR in 2017, "looking at this in VR gives you much more insight into the data than looking at a 2D graph." In 2018 CTO Donalek said in a company statement that "business intelligence platforms need to be 3D and collaborative by design." TechCrunch's Lucas Matney noted that customers did not need many headsets to start, since the software also ran on desktop and mobile, and wrote that it was "a little unclear whether the jump from 2D to 3D is really giving users a ton of extra insights."

The US patent "Systems and methods for high dimensional 3D data visualization" (US 10,621,762 B2, granted 14 April 2020, priority date 14 May 2018), covers using machine learning to choose how data dimensions are mapped to visual properties such as position, color and size. Its description names VR headsets such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets, as well as Google Cardboard and Microsoft HoloLens, as display devices, and describes a 3D virtual office in which several users examine data together. The company's 2026 descriptions of its defense products focus on AI agents and readiness analytics and do not mention VR.

See also

• Collaborative virtual environment
• Enterprise VR