San Francisco-based Unity Technologies has acquired Irish software start-up Artomatix and plans to grow its Dublin team.
Today (10 March), San Francisco-based Unity Technologies announced that it has acquired Irish software company Artomatix. It added that as a result of the acquisition, around 100 new jobs will be created in Dublin, with a focus on R&D.
Unity, which has created a real-time 3D development platform, will make use of Artomatix’s tech, which uses AI and neural networks to streamline 3D artistic workflows.
As part of the acquisition, Artomatix will join Unity while continuing to operate out of Dublin. There will be a new Unity office in Dublin city centre, where the team is expected to grow to more than 100 people over the next two years.
The potential for ArtEngine
Artomatix’s main software offering, ArtEngine, is used in studios around the world, in a variety of industries such as video games, movies and marketing. ArtEngine leverages AI to enhance an artist’s ability to produce photorealistic content.
The company was founded in 2014 and was previously featured on Siliconrepublic.com as Start-up of the Week.
In a statement, Unity said that it is committed to help meet the demand for high-quality content by “empowering content creators with cutting-edge, AI-assisted artistic workflows, so they can spend less time focusing on the repetitive minutiae and more time on creative efforts”.
Brett Bibby, chief product officer and VP of engineering at Unity Technologies, said: “AI-assisted content creation tools empower artists by increasing their creative velocity to produce better work and get to quality faster.
“ArtEngine helps game studios create realistic content for the next generation of consoles and VFX studios to achieve better visuals for films, and can enable equally impressive results for creatives working in other industries.
“From automotive and architecture to retail, marketing and more, the demand for high fidelity design visualisations is growing at an exponential rate and will benefit from ArtEngine’s capabilities.”
The acquisition
Joe Blake, CEO of Artomatix, added: “Unity understands the value of enabling creators to do more, and that’s something we’re deeply committed to.
“AI creation tools like ArtEngine help to put AAA quality content within reach of more creators than ever before. By joining Unity, we can greatly accelerate the delivery of our industry-leading AI for creatives.
“ArtEngine will continue to remain platform agnostic, enabling creators to benefit from our AI technology regardless of which engine they choose for their projects.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, however the Irish Times reports that the acquisition could be valued at up to $60m.
