Baidu Ventures announced that its first investment project cooperating with American VR/AR company 8i has been completed.

Baidu Ventures participated in the B round of financing of USD27 million of the company. Apart from the investment, Baidu said they will begin deep cooperation with 8i in the product sector.

8i was founded in 2014 and headquartered in Los Angeles, U.S. and Wellington, New Zealand. The company focuses on 3D character imaging in the VR/AR/MR sector. It is committed to realizing large scale, low cost, and high precision 3D character imaging and has developed a series of image capture, splicing and compression core algorithms that are compatible with all AR/VR platforms.

So far, 8i's technologies have been used by many companies, including L'Oreal Paris, in technical training and brand advertising sales. In 2017, the company will launch a Holo App for customers, which will apply 3D portrait technologies to mobile devices.