Toronto’s Bubl Technology, the maker of a spherical camera for capturing 360-degree images and video, closed a $4.6 million seed round Wednesday. The round was led by Samsung Ventures, J-Tech Capital, and other unnamed investors.
At the time of the funding announcement, Bubl founder Sean Ramsay announced he would be relinquishing his role as CEO, and taking on the role of Chief Innovation Officer. Current VP of Hardware, Dan Mills, will serve as interim CEO as the Board of Directors searches for a permanent CEO.
Bubl had gotten its seed funding from a successful Kickstarter campaign, and the latest funding news comes shortly after it began shipping its cameras to initial backers in August. Bubl missed its initial goal of shipping in May 2014, but the timing of the actual release nicely coincides with the growing interest in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality applications of 360 imaging. In the mean time, however, competition has grown with Japan’s Ricoh unveiling its 360-degree camera, Theta, and France’s Kolor providing software to stich GoPro footage together.
Ramsay said in a statement, “Bubl Technology has evolved since our initial Kickstarter campaign. The original vision was a simple – to use app and a spherical camera, but now we’ve developed so much more – an entire ecosystem of hardware and software spherical technology for consumers.”