Leap Motion announced on Thursday that it had raised $30 million in Series B funding, and had entered into a partnership with Asus, giving the company a major distribution channel once its motion sensing controller is ready for release.
For Leap, which last summer tapped former Apple iAd chief Andy Miller to become its president and COO, the Asus partnership is just one of a number of deals being worked on for launch, reports TechCrunch. Asus is supposedly planning to bundle the motion controller with select all-in-one PCs and high-end laptops.
Leap Motion co-founder and CEO Michael Buckwald says an integral part of the company’s early distribution strategy will involve the bundling of the controller with existing products or integration into new devices.
A second round of funding led by venture capital firm Founders Fund recently brought in $30 million. That is in addition to the $12.75 million of funding Leap garnered with a Series A round led by Highland Capital, the firm at which Miller became a general partner after leaving Apple in 2011.
Miller says that while some developers are integrating the Leap Motion tech into existing software, others are building apps from scratch, tailored specifically to the 3D motion technology.
“As [the Leap Motion] app store matures, we’ll start to see the ratio shift towards apps that are built from the ground up, that are created and designed with this in mind,” Miller said.
Leap’s website says “Just connect our iPod-sized device and instantly get 8 cubic feet of awesome, intuitive, 3D interaction space.”
Around 12,000 dev units have been shipped out to the over 40,000 developers who have signed up to create Leap Motion apps.
The Leap Motion controller is expected to ship some time in the 1st quarter, and pre-orders are being taken at the company’s website for the price of $69.99.
