Game on: Beam XR’s secures grant funding and private backing with Innovate UK support
Innovate UK grant funding drives growth for Beam XR’s revolutionary live streaming software for the gaming industry, attracting private investment.
Background
The gaming industry is significantly larger than the music and film industries combined, yet it remains less visible to investors. The industry’s fast-paced nature and diverse range of platforms – from advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, to cloud gaming and streaming services – can create uncertainty for investors, despite the potential for high returns.
The Create Growth Programme, funded by the Department for Culture, Media, and Sports (DCMS) and delivered by Innovate UK, was designed to help creative businesses in exploring and securing investment opportunities. It aims to bridge the gap between investors, who typically seek scalability and defensible intellectual property (IP), by identifying the investment opportunities that are often considered complex and high-risk.
About Beam XR
The Newcastle-based gaming company, founded in 2023, gained validation from developers at various industry conferences, prompting them to refine their concepts and develop a revolutionary live streamer and content creation toolkit for Virtual Reality (VR) and Extended Reality (XR).
Before Beam XR’s software development kit, live video streaming from a standalone headset wasn’t possible. It now enables seamless live streaming to Twitch, YouTube or TikTok.
See Beam XR's work in action
De-risking investment with Innovate UK support
Investment and grant funding from Creative UK and the Create Growth Programme have supported the further development of the company’s pioneering streaming technology.
Paul Miller, CEO & Co-Founder of Beam XR, said: “Funding is important not only for the funding alone but for the attention you can bring onto your business. You can create that sense of urgency and hype around your business and pull investors into that excitement that was started off by Innovate UK and allowed us to take them on board.
The Create Growth Programme helped us to de-risk investment because our technology is really at the forefront of what’s possible in the Virtual Reality (VR) headset. It has allowed us to pull in investors that may have been a bit more wary about investing in something that is so cutting edge.”
The future
With Innovate UK’s Create Growth Programme Team deeply embedded in the creative industries, the company aims to continue collaborating with their connections while further establishing itself as a leading developer of effortless live-streaming and user generated content for Meta Quest & PC Virtual Reality games.
Related programmes
Create Growth Programme
Helping businesses in England convert their creative potential into creative growth.
Immersive Tech Network
Innovate UK Immersive Tech Network brings together industry, researchers and research organisations, the public sector, entrepreneurs, innovators and end-users to support the UK in becoming the global leader in applications of immersive technologies: high-end visualisation, virtual, mixed, and augmented reality, haptics and other sensory interfaces with data.