Snap Inc. Acquires Another Company To Make Augmented Reality Shopping A Reality

Snap Inc., parent company of Snapchat, is making a big bet on Augmented Reality shopping. To empower e-commerce, the company has announced the acquisition of Vertebrae. 

Vertebrae is a company that enables brands to create and manage 3D versions of their products. A spokesperson said Snap Inc. the 50-person team at Vertebrae will continue to develop the platform for existing and new clients. 

It’s obvious Snap Inc. wants a company (in this case, Vertebrae) that can easily upload visuals and other product information at the back end while creating 3D versions so shoppers could access and shop directly on Snapchat.

While Snap initially used augmented reality technology for wacky effects such as for puking rainbows and dancing hotdogs, the company is increasingly looking at AR as a way to shop. 

To confirm this, the company recently partnered with Gucci to allow people virtually try on a pair of limited-edition sneakers. These early tests of AR shopping experiences have shown, according to Snap Inc., that people are more likely to buy after they interact with the item in 3D. 

In an exclusive statement to The Verge, Vertebrae’s CEO Vince Cacace, acknowledged that his company is excited to join Snap. According to him, the company will strengthen and scale its world-class 3D asset platform for retailers and brands. “The future of AR commerce is bright, and we’ll continue to make it easy for our partners to create, manage, and deploy AR experiences across all customer touch points,” he added. 

Snap didn’t disclose how much it paid to acquire Vertebrae, but according to The Verge’s report, the deal was likely small relative to its $500 million acquisition of WaveOptics, which makes the AR displays in its Spectacles smart glasses. 

Vertebrae raised about $10 million in venture funding to date. It lists Toyota, Adidas, CB2, and other well-known brands as clients on its website. It also worked with Facebook — Snap’s biggest competitor — on AR shopping tech in 2019. 

Combining the Vertebra with Snap’s other shopping and shopping features, including Fit Analytics and Screenshop, makes it easy to understand its ambition as a shopping destination. For brands, the company has created a self-service system that allows people to easily download and manage the AR versions of their products that they can find on Snapchat. 

For Snapchat users, imagine being able to scan pretty much anything in the real world and turn it into a virtual object that can be manipulated, resized, and purchased without leaving the app.

If people actually shop using augmented reality on their phones, Snapchat will become a more useful and effective advertising platform in the near future because someone’s purchases are a reliable indicator of other things that might be of interest. 

Beyond smartphones, augmented reality shopping will become even more immersive in the world of the future, where more people can potentially wear smart glasses with displays, such as Spectacles’ latest Snap glasses (referring to the picture below).