VUSE XR, a software company from Freiburg, Germany, has raised €1.2M in pre-seed funding, the earliest stage of outside investment, to make mixed reality training quicker to produce. Mixed reality uses a headset to lay digital objects over the real world, and the XR in the company’s name stands for extended reality, the umbrella term for such technology.
The company’s platform builds interactive 3D lessons from a manufacturer’s own engineering files and documents, and the lessons run on headsets, phones and web browsers. VUSE XR plans to spend the new money on the platform, on AI tools for creating content and on sales.
IACD, a Düsseldorf network of business angels, led the round, and other angel investors also took part. Markus Roithmeier, an IACD member who chairs VUSE XR’s advisory board, pointed to the mix of a specialist team, AI-based technology and existing customers as the basis for a software business that can grow at scale.
Andreas Goss, another IACD member and a former chief executive of thyssenkrupp Steel, said good training matters for productivity, for passing on knowledge and for running complex equipment safely.
Training Built From Engineering Files
The product, VUSE XR Hub, takes computer-aided design (CAD) models and other engineering data and turns them into 3D training. A trainee could, for example, work through the parts and steps of a machine on a virtual copy before handling the real one.
Teams build scenes, add animations and guided sequences without writing code, then share the finished lesson through a web link. VUSE XR describes the results as mixed reality twins, virtual copies of complex machines, and says the Hub can convert CAD data into XR content within seconds.
The new AI tools are aimed at content creation. They draw on material a company already has, such as technical descriptions, operating manuals and process documents, and turn it into training courses. VUSE XR has not said which steps are fully automated or how much editing people still do afterwards.
“Mixed reality hardware is advancing rapidly, but creating mixed reality training content remains the biggest barrier to broader enterprise adoption,” said Niclas Matthias, the company’s co-founder and chief executive.
ZEISS And Hologic On The Customer List
VUSE XR names optics and medical technology group ZEISS, logistics systems maker Witron, women’s health technology company Hologic and German energy supplier badenova among its customers. The list spans manufacturing, medical and laboratory technology, logistics and energy.
The company earns recurring licence fees for the software, and also charges for setting customers up and for help building their first training applications. VUSE XR is listed in the Siemens Xcelerator partner ecosystem, and a product page for the Hub on the Siemens website says XR training simulations can cut onboarding time, the period new staff need to get up to speed, by up to 50%. That figure has not been independently verified.
Niclas Matthias and Dr Paul Matthias, now chief technology officer, founded VUSE XR in November 2023, and the team includes head of product Daniel Wassy. The company has since brought in Jan Hendrik Degner as chief commercial officer and Robert Günther as vice-president of sales and service delivery.
With that team in place and ZEISS and Hologic already on the customer list, VUSE XR is putting its pre-seed money into the next step: AI tools that build training from the manuals and documents customers already hold.
