13th Lab

13th Lab was a computer vision firm established in Stockholm, Sweden in 2010. The founding team consisted of Anders Bond, Petter Ivmark, and Oskar Linde, who served as the company's CEO. The company focused on developing a platform for mobile devices centered on Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), a technology that enables a device to construct a map of its surroundings while simultaneously keeping track of its own location within that map.

The firm's core business was the creation of a computer vision platform designed to empower mobile devices with advanced 3D perception capabilities. Their technology allowed smartphone cameras to recognize and map 2D and 3D objects in real-time. This was demonstrated through several products, including a game called Ball Invasion and an application named Minecraft Reality. For developers, 13th Lab provided the PointCloud SDK, a software development kit that offered a free library for building iOS applications with sophisticated computer vision features. The business model involved providing these tools to other developers, likely through licensing or other service agreements, to foster a broader ecosystem of applications using their SLAM technology. In June 2012, the company secured $700,000 in a seed funding round from investors Creandum and GP Bullhound.

A significant milestone in the company's trajectory occurred in December 2014 when it was acquired by Oculus VR, which was itself recently purchased by Facebook (now Meta). The acquisition was valued at approximately $25 million. This move was part of Oculus' strategy to bring top talent in computer vision to solve challenges in virtual reality. Following the acquisition, the 13th Lab team relocated to Silicon Valley to integrate with the Oculus team, ceasing their existing projects to focus entirely on VR development. Their expertise in creating efficient, real-time 3D reconstruction frameworks was identified as a key asset for building immersive virtual experiences, such as creating digital models of real-world locations. Keywords: computer vision, SLAM, mobile computer vision, 3D reconstruction, augmented reality, virtual reality, PointCloud SDK, Oculus acquisition, mobile 3D mapping, real-time 3D modeling, iOS computer vision, Anders Bond, Petter Ivmark, Oskar Linde, Minecraft Reality, Ball Invasion, 3D object recognition, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, mobile SDK, developer platform, 3D mapping software, spatial computing