Austria - On its way towards becoming an XR hub, with events such as AWE EU and R&D centres of global players

“Austria's XR and VR sector is in a healthy and promising state due to a combination of strong national support and a solid foundation in research,” says Matthias Grabner, Chief Partnership Officer at the independent think tank AI Austria.

This support includes applied R&D funding with a 14% research premium, which can be combined with direct funding (up to 70% for start-ups) from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). Grabner also attributes innovation and growth in XR to the willingness of Austrian corporate customers to adopt the technologies.

Organisations such as Fraunhofer Austria Research also make a significant contribution to the strong ecosystem. For example, this innovation research partner for Austrian industry offers XR workshops for startups that have little or no experience with the technology.

The ecosystem supports founders on their individual path, which can be very different in terms of both the starting point and the goal. This is demonstrated by examples such as vrisch, a company specialising in the creation of XR experiences in the fields of entertainment and education, and the Auge project, which aims to support people with visual field defects using VR solutions.

A unique place for the industry

Martin Herdina is the ex-CEO of Wikitude, an Austrian AR pioneer that gained worldwide recognition for its platform before being acquired by the Qualcomm technology group in 2021. Qualcomm's AR R&D centre is also located in Austria.

Herdina believes that Austria has a relatively high proportion of AR, VR and XR initiatives in its startup ecosystem, making the country a “leading and unique place for the entire industry.” He says this has been fuelled by academic research from universities and research institutions. Statistics Austria estimates that approx. €16.6 billion will be spent on research and development in Austria in 2024.

On 29 and 30 October, this year's Augmented World Expo (AWE) brought together leading XR pioneers and industry giants such as Meta, Google, Siemens, Audi, ESA, Snap, Niantic, Unity and Pico in Vienna to showcase innovative, XR-defining products and technologies. This year's expo will focus on the social impact of XR applications, increasing efficiency and improving safety measures in the industry, immersive gaming and AI integration in the XR world.

Significant investment and international recognition

Universities and research institutions such as the Graz University of Technology and the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) began investing in research and development in computer vision and perception almost two decades ago. “These investments have borne fruit, and this strong foundation has been utilised and reinforced by large multinational companies such as PTC, Qualcomm, Snap, AVL and TTTech, which have invested in local AR and VR initiatives through acquisitions and high-profile research collaborations with academic institutions,” Martin Herdina states.

According to Matthias Grabner of AI Austria, Austria's talent pool in this area is also attractive for US-based tech giants: “Snap Inc. chose Vienna for its R&D centre and Blackshark.ai collaborated with Microsoft for the Microsoft Flight Simulator, which demonstrates Austria's expertise in high-fidelity simulations.”

In addition, recent investments are an impressive sign of the strong national and international confidence in Austria's XR and VR innovations. For example, Innerspaces, the provider of plug-and-play VR training solutions, raised € 5.7 million from German, Austrian and Canadian VCs in February this year. Moreover, NXRT, a company for mixed reality automotive solutions, was given € 5 million by German, Luxembourgish and Austrian VCs in August. International startups are also focusing on Austria. One example is the South Korean XR startup Virnect, which selected Vienna to be the location of its European headquarters and research centre.

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