CommonGround raises $25M for immersive video avatar technology that doesn’t rely on VR gear

Key Facts

• Today, a startup in that bigger ecosystem, which believes it can fix one aspect of how this works — how we ourselves appear — is announcing some funding along with a beta of its live avatar software that has been years in the making.
• CommonGround — an Israeli/Silicon Valley startup that has built technology for people to use their smartphones to scan their faces for responsive, real-time three-dimensional avatars that can be used in video applications — has raised $25 million, money that it is using both to continue developing its tech and getting it launched into the world.
• Now, you can go to the site to scan yourself and create an avatar; in Q1 2023, the company plans to release the first application to use that avatar: meeting software where your likeness, or an idealized version of your likeness, will be able to sit around a virtual table to engage and respond to others in the conversation — complete with reactions and movements mirroring those you are making IRL.
• (For now, you can share the avatars with friends and put them into a dancing animation.) Like “TrueSelf Scan,” the name of the initial application that’s used to scan a person’s image, the meeting software also will not require a VR headset to use and engage with — users will be “seated” in a room that will be shown on a video screen.

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