Foresight Group, a leading independent infrastructure and private equity investment manager, and Williams Advanced Engineering have announced a £1.5 million investment into enterprise collaboration and virtual reality/augmented reality software company Masters of Pie.
The Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund (“the Fund”) led the funding round, which included Robert Bosch Venture Capital (“RBVC”), and follow-on funding from existing investor Downing Ventures.
The Masters of Pie technology allows VR and AR to be more efficiently used by professionals working in immersive design, production, review and training, across multiple enterprise verticals.
The Company was founded by Karl Maddix, CEO, and Matt Ratcliffe, Chief Product Officer, with a vision to build a collaboration platform to pull together these emerging technologies to bring a wide range of efficiencies to data-heavy applications.
The Company has developed ‘Radical’, a software add-in which can plug into existing enterprise software packages to add secure collaborative functionality for data-heavy 3D files.
Radical is already in use by more than 250 global engineering professionals across numerous sectors including aerospace, aviation, defence, automotive, consumer goods and manufacturing. The next generation of the technology is already live and in use by major organisations via its global channel partner, Siemens NX.
Chris Wiles, Senior Investment Manager at Foresight, said: “We are delighted to support Masters of Pie in the next stage of its ambitious growth strategy. We continue to be impressed by Karl and Matt’s vision of real-time collaboration with data-heavy 3D files and are excited by the value-add expertise which the Fund can provide to help Masters of Pie deliver
on this vision.”
Karl Maddix, CEO and Co-Founder, Masters of Pie, said: “The backing of Foresight and Williams Advanced Engineering, along with participation of RBVC, brings financial acumen and world-renowned expertise in engineering design and manufacturing to Masters of Pie as we continue to expand the use of Radical.
“The team is delighted that an engineering pioneer like WAE has given us its backing – we are looking forward to working closely with its team going forward.”