MetaShop AI is this cool software that you can use to create photo-realistic 3D- models of objects which are captured real-time at scale.
Earlier & to date(in some cases) companies create 3D models with the help of 3D visual artists. This is very time consuming, is a lot of manual effort and a very expensive process.
This is where MetaShop enters.
Currently, they convert any video to 3D, but they are working on implementing Image to 3D technology.
Founder
MetaShop AI is created by Mukul Ingle. He is the Founder & CTO of the Company. I’ve spoken to him in a couple of meetups.
Prior to this he was building Superset Labs, which he ran for 3yrs, fully Bootstrapped in the Computer Vision domain w/ serving clients like Larsen & Toubro, Kalpataru etc, but ultimately had to be shut down during Covid.
The idea of MetaShop struck him when he had to put Sofa in his living room one day, thinking this would be a cool project to work on, he proceeded to build it. He’s raised Pre-Seed $350k from 100x
Competitors
Polycam – 3D artists, Hobbyists
Matterport – 2D image based real estate presentations
Kiri Engine – 3D artists
These are few competitors of MetaShop AI who are also well-funded, but these are all good at only one specific thing– serving a consumer market which mostly includes Hobbyists & Artists.
But, can’t these well funded companies do what MetaShop is doing?
-Since, these companies have their Models trained based on a Specific set of data in which they serve in; it’s difficult for them to transition to cater to every other domain.
MetaShop has been focused on serving a wider set of domains since Day1, hence, they have trained their models keeping that in mind.
Market
This is a B2B solution and they are currently serving clients in the real-estate domain. Their target company domains include Real Estate, E-commerce, Gaming, VFX, Manufacturing, Used Vehicle Markets(like Cars24) etc.
Even companies like Amazon use Manual 3D rendering to showcase products on the site + this feature is not available in every product because of the massive variety of products in E-com Space.
Vision
The founder aims to make this the singular one-stop all-in 3D Solution for Businesses of all types. Since it’s domain-agnostic, they’ve trained a general model which can produce high accuracy output which is future-proof.
Trendline
Earlier, everything used to happen manually from 3D rendering to creating 3D model, but as time progresses, I feel like as more and more companies are looking to provide better, more immersive experiences to their customers by implementing technologies like these to improve the overall UX of product and give a better understanding of their offering (Ex: getting an idea of table/ sofa would look in the living room)
Here’s a demo
Personal Opinion
Just like how Apple and Meta are building Vision pro and Quest and dominating in the VR Space,
Softwares like Runway AI for video-editing and Midjourney transformed image generation. I think MetaShopAI has the potential to kill it in this real-time, photo-realistic 3D- models at scale.
Conclusion after interacting w/ the Founder – Dude has previously worked in this domain of computer vision but more importantly the dude has done his homework and has a deep market insight.
Risk factor
- This ambition of wanting to go all in and touch upon all the domains is great, but will that come at the cost of NOT doing one thing perfectly? Only time will tell.
- Yes, well-funded companies are doing only one thing in a specific domain and Yes, they have trained their model with one set of data. But, what if they change their mind and decide to go all in to explore all the targetable domains pouring in all the cash they got? Standing a chance is questionable.