Startup Story
Being able to try on clothes virtually or making a car appear in AR on your driveway makes these items much more attractive to consumers and can increase conversion rates for online retailers. Yet one of the biggest challenges in virtual and augmented reality as well as the metaverse industry is the creation of 3D models. This type of content creation can be time consuming and costly because it has to be created manually from 2D images first.

One Estonian startup, named Alpha AR, has found a way to sidestep the manual creation of 3D models through a new AI-powered platform. “We are building an AI tool, which will make the content generation simple and will create scalable products, augmented reality, virtual try-ons and gaming platforms,” explained CEO Madis Alesmaa. “We are trying to automate the content production side.” The startup’s mission is to bring augmented reality to the masses and make 3D affordable and scalable.

A collaboration for innovation
In the aim to gain a more international audience, Alpha AR applied for the 2020 LVMH Innovation Award which every year rewards a project from an innovative startup during Viva Technology. Regrettably, the 2020 VivaTech edition was canceled, but the LVMH Innovation Award ceremony was still able to take place online – and Alpha AR was listed as a finalist!

Thanks to their participation in the awards, the AR startup was able to increase their international visibility without even leaving Estonia. More particularly, our Innovation Team at VivaTech found Alpha AR’s technology a perfect solution to create digital twins on our digital platform for the next edition. And a collaboration was born!

For VivaTech 2021, Alpha AR helped to recreate 80 innovations in 3D and AR so that both physical and digital visitors could view and interact with the top innovations of the event. As a first hybrid model, the 3D and AR creations added another dimension to the event that VivaTech never had before and augmented visitors’ experience. In addition to their creations on the platform, Alpha AR also had their own online booth and were able to interact and network with multiple businesses and individuals during the four days.