Loup Ventures: Tech Giants Have Invested In 217 AR, VR Startups

Artificial reality and artificial intelligence, growing themes from 2017, are likely to continue — which has many analysts scrambling to readjust their portfolio to add exposure to the trend.

The Expert

Loup Ventures' Lindsay Boyajian and Zack Kadish.

The Thesis

The buzz around AR and VR has built, and notable tech giants have invested a combined $2.1 billion in at least 217 startups in the AR and VR space, the report said

It's unclear which of the two new technologies is seeing faster adoption rates, Boyajian and Kadish said. On one hand, Apple Inc. AAPL's CEO Tim Cook said in September 2016: "augmented reality is the larger of the two [VR & AR], probably by far, because this gives the capability for both of us to sit and be very present talking to each other, but also have other things visually for both of us to see."

But search data shows that there are 30 times more searches related to virtual reality than augmented reality per month, according to Loup Ventures.

Also important to note: 30 percent of all tracked searches have a Google answer box, which implies that brands and publishers may have a need to optimize their content for answer boxes, the analysts said. 

"When it comes to what topics to write about, the search data suggests there is opportunity to create content around transactional [late-stage] search terms," according to Loup Ventures. "These queries have relatively high search volume, but not a lot of high quality content relating to these topics. Creating content answering transactional queries is recommended."

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