Filmmaker Casey Neistat is known for his prowess behind the lens. Now, he’s investing alongside a group of some of Silicon Valley’s brightest venture capitalists into a startup trying to revolutionize the webcam.
What’s happening:
- San Francisco based camera startup Opal has closed a $17 million Series A financing round
- The round was led by Peter Thiel’s Founder Fund and included notable participation from Casey Neistat, Slack Fund, Kindred Ventures, Eighty-Seven Capital and Marques Brownlee
Why it matters:
- No one has ever been able to successfully bring computational photography onto a webcam before
- Opal is aiming to be the first company to bring DSLR video quality into a webcam that is easy to use, mount and record with
Going deeper:
- Founders from Airbnb, Instagram, Shopify, Twitch and Youtube also participated in the recent funding round
- Opal is also building their own software platform to enable seamless editing of video content, which is known as Composer
By the numbers:
- Opal’s flagship product the Opal C1 is made of less than 2% plastic
- Since inception Opal has raised $20M USD
The intrigue:
- Opal’s camera is powered by an Intel Myriad chip to produce high resolution images
