UK Startup Blippar Confirms It has Acquired AR Pioneer Layar

Augmented reality startup Blippar has confirmed it has acquired Layar, an AR pioneer that launched in 2009. Terms were undisclosed in a blog post on the company’s site today. We broke the news of the acquisition last week, but this announcement confirms our previous story.

The acquisition makes Blippar one of the largest AR players globally, giving it a powerful positioning in the AR and visual browsing space, which may help its adoption in the mass consumer space where AR has tended to languish. Only Oculus VR, which was acquired by Facebook, has reignited interest in the AR space, so Blippar now looks very interesting when looked at from that perspective.

An internal memo, obtained by TechCrunch writer Ingrid Lunden, referring to Blippar’s CEO and co-founder, Ambarish Mitra, previously confirmed the deal, which was due to be announced officially on June 19.

The memo detailed how Layar CEO Quintin Schevernels visited Blippar’s offices to discuss “how we could work together to bring our vision to hundreds of millions of people.”

London/NYC-based Blippar, founded in 2011, has raised an undisclosed amount from Qualcomm Ventures. Netherlands-based Layar, founded in 2009, has raised some $17 million from Intel Capital, Sunstone and others.

Blippar’s product creates “blipps” in which users snap pictures in printed or other display ads through the Blippar app, triggering bigger interactive ad campaigns for many leading brands.