But using AR for telepresence, as Beem intends, isn’t a common use case.

Surprisingly, the idea for the startup comes from a founder who grew up without much access to technology. Beem CEO Janosch Amstutz describes his parents as “hippies” who lived in a small Australian beachside town, Byron Bay, where they raised cows and chickens, used solar power, collected rainwater and didn’t even have a telephone - just a two-way radio that the community would share. “We put a very big emphasis on face-to-face communication,” he explains of his alternative childhood environment’s lack of modern technology. Meanwhile, communications continued to evolve from home telephones to cell phones to Skype. “The premise of Beem is that there’s going to be an inevitable next step in the way that humans communicate digitally, which is more credible and more immersive than doing a video call.” “But then we kind of stopped,” says Amstutz. The founder put together a team of computer scientists and researchers to work on the concept, which today includes Chief of Product Damian Hickey, previously product head at AR pioneer Blippar and Denis Islamov, co-founder and CTO, whose background is in applied mathematics and physics.Īfter its official founding in 2017, Beem (previously HoloMe) did not fully target the consumer market. Instead, it developed AR projects and campaigns for brands, businesses and other organizations, including Vogue, Carolina Herrera, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, H&M, Forever 21, Warner Music, LADBible (in partnership with KSI and Craig David), the British Army, TEDx and several others.ĭuring this time, Beem’s technology was used to stream an artist’s music in AR, deliver a live conference to users’ homes in AR, create “virtual catwalks” and create other sorts AR experiences for its clients.

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