Children’s AR game developer Osmo secures $24m funding round

Kid-focussed AR games development outfit Osmo has closed a $24 million funding round that’ll help it grow its business beyond iPad development.

Osmo, previously known as Tangible Play, has currently only developed games for Apple’s iPad tablet, but Osmo plan to use this investment to push into iPhone development and hire 30 more staff with the aim of expanding the company.

The funding round has come from Mattel, Calibrate Partners, Collab+Sesame and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, although three previous investors: Upfront Ventures, Accel Partners and K9 Ventures chose to contribute to this funding round too. Osmo raised $12 million in funding back in 2014.

"We’ve gotten very good traction in schools, and we are ready to scale it up in the next year," Pramod Sharma, Osmo’s CEO, told VentureBeat in an interview. "This is great validation, but Osmo is in a very early part of a long journey. We have to keep building things that kids love."