INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Ikea, the Swedish home furnishings and decor giant, has been one of the leaders among retailers when it comes to adapting to tech
innovations that impact its business, being one of the first to launch augmented reality applications, partnering with others to develop
smart home devices and launching a business unit to build that out further, investing in relevant startups, and even picking up of logistics
startups to expand its reach
Ikea, and the primary franchisor of Ikea and owner of Ikea.com), has acquired Geomagical Labs, an AI imaging startup based out of Mountain
their spaces, and how they would look with Ikea pieces in them.To be clear, Ikea already had developed an AR-based visualisation tool, as
besides also giving Ikea the tools to build more features and tools in the future in house.(That is the kind of technology that is always
useful, but perhaps especially right now, when physical stores are being shut down in many countries around the world to stave off spread of
Martin Coppola, Chief Digital Officer, Ikea Retail, in an interview
being made between Geomagical and the Ingka Group, which is also the company that acquired Task Rabbit and made other investments under the
number of other individuals.From what we understand, the startup had been talking to a number of other interested parties, including other
retailers and a couple of large tech companies
(For some more context, computer vision has been a very hot area for acquisition, both to pick up products and talent, and Apple and Google
are among those that have been aggressively acquiring in this area in recent times to expand their own platforms.)The reason why Geomagical
rather than potentially get subsumed into a bigger tech machine that might or might not use it, or instead choose to redeploy the team
(which includes six PhDs, including Totty himself) on something completely different, experience Totty would know given his track
have the ability to get partnerships of this kind
And the challenge of a general purpose tech with a special product is that your domain of applicability is lower
big tech companies, including many years at Google, as well as Samsung and others, and she sees this acquisition as an essential move in
focusing the retailer even more squarely on its technology opportunity, by not just adopting new innovations but by owning the IP and
This will continue to be the case
