The QuarkXR Story

QuarkXR was born as Intugame, a project built to stream games to early phone-based VR devices. We pivoted in 2016, joining US-based Boost VC, and later receiving investment from HTC VIVE. In 2017, we began collaboration with Orange, and in 2019 with Deutsche Telekom, culminating with our first 5G customer trials together in 2020. Today, we have become a multinational team based in the US and Europe. 

Our co-founders Krasi and Drago are both from Bulgaria, where they met and were excited by the potential of early VR headsets, like the Oculus Rift, but wanted to make the technology accessible to everyone, not just those with powerful computers close by, which led to the beginning of what QuarkXR is today.

What Is QuarkXR?

QuarkXR is an XR cloud streaming platform. Let’s explain what that means, and how it can help your business in real life.

First of all, XR is an umbrella term meaning both VR (devices like the Oculus/Meta Quest, where you’re in a virtual world), AR (devices like the Hololens, where you see the real world and virtual objects together), and everything in between.

You can have either mobile devices or ones which connect to another computer, but it’s important to remember that all applications are normally limited by the amount of computer power available. A Quest or Hololens is ultimately a small computer you happen to wear on your face, and if you try to push it very hard, it won’t perform well: put dozens of people in a meeting, or have multiple highly detailed objects, for example, and it won’t perform well.

QuarkXR solves these and other problems by storing and streaming data from servers in data centers which have powerful graphics cards, similar to the way Netflix can stream a movie, except in XR you can interact with the environment as if all the data was right with you, thanks to our technology. This opens up new possibilities in fields from architecture, to worker training, to remote control of robots, and many more. With QuarkXR, it is possible to have meetings with 50 people or even more, or have detailed copies of a complex piece of industrial machinery -- and the entire industrial park it is located in -- in a smooth virtual world experience.

What Are People Using QuarkXR For Today?

QuarkXR has over 30 use cases right now, and we’re always looking to grow that number. For a recent case we’re particularly proud of, please see our collaboration with Enscape discussed here: https://www.quarkxr.com/post/case-study-experience-architectural-vr-directly-from-the-cloud-with-quarkxr

Here are some more examples of what we can do:

Control Room

Photorealistic Rendering

And here is our deck: https://docsend.com/view/hdddeg8jgvb2vhv8 

The QuarkXR Vision

Moving forward, we hope not only to improve the capabilities of existing XR devices, making them more powerful than they otherwise would be, but to help bring the cost of usable commercial devices below 100 USD, making them more affordable for SMEs and easier to deploy on smaller budgets. Over time we’ll build up a larger and larger group of content partners, so we can help our customers easily find and customize solutions for every business need instead of having everything custom-designed from scratch. Ultimately, we want to make the process of integrating XR at a new workplace as straightforward as purchasing a new computer or better office furniture, based on a scalable and flexible subscription model.

QuarkXR and Kazakhstan

In connecting with Astana Hub, we hope to find partners within the local ecosystem in order to deploy and scale XR on the national and regional market. We see opportunities not only for training and safety applications in sectors like energy and mining, but also in manufacturing and services, such as automotive and retail, as well as education and healthcare. We believe strongly that XR, facilitated by QuarkXR’s cloud technology and existing Kazakh data center and telecommunications infrastructure, can support the upskilling of Kazakh citizens and contribute to economic diversification and national development. We are excited to engage with the partners and stakeholders of Astana Hub, and hope you will join us in our quest to enable exciting emerging technologies to deliver practical benefits to all of Kazakhstan.