Zappar

Zappar
Information
Industry	Augmented Reality
Founded	2011
Founder	Caspar Thykier, Simon Taylor, Connell Gauld, Kirk Ewing
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Notable Personnel	Caspar Thykier (CEO), Connell Gauld (CTO), Simon Taylor (Chief R&D Officer)
Products	Zapcodes, Zapworks, Universal AR, Mattercraft, Zapbox, Zapvision, Zapworks Spaces
Website	https://www.zappar.com

Zappar is a British augmented reality company based in London. It was founded in 2011 and grew out of computer vision research at the University of Cambridge. The company began with a smartphone app that opened AR content from printed markers called zapcodes, and it ran AR campaigns for brands on packaging, print and retail displays.

Zappar later sold its creation tools as a subscription platform, Zapworks, and in 2020 released its tracking libraries as the Universal AR software development kits for browser-based WebAR and apps. It also makes Zapbox, a low-cost mixed reality headset that holds a smartphone, and Mattercraft, a 3D development environment for web-based AR, VR and WebXR content. In October 2024 Infinite Reality announced that it had agreed to buy Zappar for 45 million US dollars, but in June 2025 Zappar said it had not been acquired and remained an independent company.

Reviewed 6 October 2026. Founding, officers and control (Companies House), founders, ZapBox Kickstarters, Series A, Zapworks, Universal AR, World Tracking, Zapbox launch specs, Mattercraft, Zapvision, Spaces and Infinite Reality claims checked against each cited source. About review dates.

History

Founding and zapcodes (2011-2015)

Zappar's own materials name four founders: Caspar Thykier (chief executive), Connell Gauld (chief technology officer), Simon Taylor (chief research and development officer) and Kirk Ewing. Taylor began working on smartphone AR during his PhD studies at the University of Cambridge in 2007. The Register described his doctoral research as work on fast algorithms for locating objects in camera frames. Real Business reported in 2015 that the technology had evolved from the PhD work of two Cambridge students.

UK Companies House records show that Zappar Limited, a private limited company registered in Scotland, was incorporated on 2 March 2011. Thykier was appointed a director on the day of incorporation, and Ewing, Gauld and Taylor on 16 May 2011. Its registered office is in Auchterarder, Perthshire, and its controlling shareholder is Zappar (Holding) Limited.

The free Zappar app opened AR content when a phone camera was pointed at a printed zapcode. UploadVR described zapcodes as a development of barcodes and QR codes that let devices recognize real-world objects and trigger interactions. By early 2015 the company offered a self-service tool, Zapcode Creator, and its packaging campaigns included Pringles and Wise snack packets in Mexico for Arca Continental, Wendy's children's packaging in the United States with a Scooby-Doo game, and Dunkin' Donuts box lids in the Philippines.

Zapworks and the first ZapBox (2016-2017)

In June 2016 Zappar launched Zapworks, a set of AR and VR creation tools that it said had been in development for more than five years, originally to build its own campaigns for clients such as Rovio (Angry Birds), Coca-Cola, PEZ and Warner Bros. The suite had three tools: Widgets for basic content, Designer for interactive content with image tracking, and Studio, a scriptable 3D toolkit for AR and VR. Pricing was per seat, at 45 US dollars a month for a Basic seat and 135 US dollars a month for a Pro seat that included Studio, with unlimited zapcodes. Studio content could also be published as VR for Google Cardboard without an app store submission.

In November 2016 Zappar started a Kickstarter campaign for ZapBox, a 30 US dollar cardboard kit for smartphone mixed reality. The kit contained a flat-packed cardboard headset and paper hand controllers, and Zappar planned a wide-angle adapter for the phone camera lens so that it could keep scanning for markers. Instead of zapcodes it used a new kind of marker that Zappar called pointcodes; Taylor told UploadVR that these markers were "the fundamental unit that makes all of this possible on a smartphone." Laid out on a table top or across walls and floor, the pointcodes let the phone map the environment and the user's position relative to real and virtual objects. The campaign had an initial target of 30,000 US dollars and ended on 16 December 2016, with delivery planned for April 2017. Auganix reported in 2020 that the campaign had raised 280 percent of its goal from 1,854 backers. Thykier described the project to IBTimes as an attempt to answer the question "could we make Magic Leap, Magic Cheap?"

In February 2017 Zappar closed a 3.75 million US dollar Series A round led by the London investor Hargreave Hale, with participation from the brand technology business You & Mr Jones and the Chinese mobile game publisher iDreamSky. The company said it would use the money to develop products and to expand its software sales, research and marketing teams. At the time it reported working with more than 200 partners, including Warner Bros, Coca-Cola and Manchester City Football Club, while Samsung and Vodafone were among the brands using Zapworks for AR on packaging and retail materials.

Universal AR and web AR (2020-2022)

On 26 May 2020 Zappar made its computer vision libraries available as Universal AR, a set of SDKs for Three.js, A-Frame, plain JavaScript, Unity and C++. The libraries covered face tracking, image tracking and instant world tracking, and could run in mobile web browsers as well as in apps. Co-founder and CTO Connell Gauld called the release "a landmark moment" that let developers "utilize our computer vision in whichever platforms and creative tools they are most familiar with."

In February 2022 the company released a beta of a SLAM-based World Tracking feature for web AR through Zapworks Studio and its Universal AR SDKs, which by then also covered Babylon.js, React Three.js and PlayCanvas. Taylor wrote that, unlike the earlier instant world tracking, the new algorithm used feature points from across the camera image regardless of their 3D arrangement. Zappar said the beta could not yet produce precise 1:1 scale placement and still needed some visual detail on surfaces.

Zapbox, Mattercraft and accessibility (2020-2026)

Zappar returned to Kickstarter in October 2020 with a redesigned ZapBox at 40 US dollars, a headset with a pair of 6DoF controllers and video see-through mixed reality, against a funding goal of 65,000 US dollars. Zappar launched the retail Zapbox at Augmented World Expo in June 2023 at 79.99 US dollars, shipping to the US, UK and EU; it required an iPhone 11 or later, with Android support planned for later in 2023. Infinite Reality's October 2024 announcement listed Zapbox at 99.99 US dollars.

Mattercraft, Zappar's 3D development environment for the web, entered open beta for all Zapworks accounts on 18 October 2023.

From 2022 Zappar also developed Zapvision, a scanning technology for accessible QR codes aimed at visually impaired people. Its D3 codes add a "dot-dot-dash" pattern to a QR code; Zappar said a 15 mm code could be detected from about 1.1 m away, more than five times the distance of a normal QR code, and that Zapvision would announce the product category and its distance from the user through text-to-speech. Developed with input from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), the accessible QR codes with Unilever won a 2023 Gaady Award in the consumer goods category. Bayer Consumer Health UK added an accessible QR code, developed with Zappar and the RNIB, to Canescool Soothing Gel Cream packaging sold from October 2023.

Infinite Reality announcement (2024-2025)

On 8 October 2024 Infinite Reality announced that it had acquired Zappar for 45 million US dollars and said Zappar would stay in London. The release quoted Thykier as saying that "joining Infinite Reality's trailblazing portfolio empowers us to scale our technology and reach a much wider audience." Infinite Reality said it was the company's sixth acquisition of 2024.

On 13 June 2025 Thykier wrote on Zappar's website that, although articles had described the acquisition as completed, "this is not the case", and that "Zappar remains a fully independent company at this time." Zappar's about page also says that, despite media reports, the company has not been acquired by Infinite Reality. As of October 2026, Companies House still listed Zappar (Holding) Limited as the person with significant control of Zappar Limited.

Products

Product	First released	Description
Zappar app and zapcodes	By 2015	Free smartphone app that opens AR content from printed zapcodes
Zapworks	June 2016	Subscription AR and VR creation platform, first sold as Widgets, Designer and Studio
ZapBox (cardboard)	2016 Kickstarter	30 US dollar cardboard mixed reality kit with pointcode markers and cardboard controllers
Universal AR	May 2020	Face, image and world tracking SDKs for web frameworks, Unity and C++
Zapbox	June 2023	Smartphone headset for iPhone 11 or later with two 6DoF Bluetooth controllers and full-colour passthrough
Mattercraft	October 2023 (open beta)	Browser-based 3D editor built on three.js with TypeScript scripting
Zapvision	2022	Accessible QR code scanning technology for visually impaired shoppers
Zapworks Spaces	By April 2026	App-free indoor navigation opened from a QR code or link

XR work

Zapbox

The 2023 Zapbox uses the iPhone's screen and Apple A-series chip. Zappar said its full-colour passthrough was comparable to that of the Meta Quest Pro and that two 6DoF Bluetooth controllers, each with six inputs, mirrored the inputs of other popular headsets. At launch it supported a Unity XR SDK provider plugin for iOS, and Zappar said it planned to add WebXR, OpenXR and PC VR streaming. Content announced for the device included a multiplayer pool game, chess and the 3D painting app Open Brush.

In a January 2024 hands-on, MIXED reported a field of view of about 100 degrees and controllers with two triggers, three thumb buttons and a thumbstick each. Tracking relied on cards placed on the floor or a table, and it was lost when the cards were blocked or the controllers left the camera's view. The headset ran 3DoF VR and 6DoF mixed reality content and could show Apple spatial videos.

Web AR and 3D tooling

Mattercraft uses three.js for rendering and TypeScript for scripting, so developers can use JavaScript libraries from the npm ecosystem. Zappar says content built with it runs without modification on iOS, Android and desktop browsers and on WebXR headsets such as Meta Quest and Magic Leap devices. The editor includes an animation system with timelines and blending, physically based rendering, particle effects, transparent video and 360-degree media. In December 2025 Zappar added MultiSet's visual positioning system to Mattercraft alongside an existing Immersal integration, so that web content could be anchored to scanned real-world locations.

Zapworks Spaces is an app-free indoor navigation product: users scan a QR code or tap a link instead of installing an app. An August 2026 update rebuilt its interface to meet WCAG 2.1 AA, added an optional accessible QR scanning tab, gave users a choice of step-free, direct or fastest routes, and restored Android WebXR support in Chrome 150 and later.

See also

• WebAR
• Blippar
• Aurasma
• 8th Wall
• Smartphone VR headset