CGTrader raises USD 2.3M to invest in marketplace growth and improve designer workflows

We have some thrilling news to share: thanks to our partners at Karma Ventures we are now ready to get bigger and better. CGTrader has raised USD 2.3M in funding to scale the business and serve the rapidly growing demand for 3D models. The investment round was led by Karma Ventures, with participation by CGTrader’s current investors Intel Capital and Practica Capital.

So far, the community has been the driving force behind the success of CGTrader. We believe that only by strengthening the community and investing in the tools used by designers, CGTrader can maintain the speed and grow to become the leading marketplace. Therefore, our main focus in the coming years will be on our community. We want to enable designers to make informed decisions about their portfolio and products by providing consistent and relevant marketplace information, so the improvements to Seller Analytics and designer dashboard pages will be introduced shortly. We are also working on some technological solutions to ease designer workflows and processes management, which in turn will enhance experience on the platform for the designers and customers alike.

We will also use the proceeds from the investment round to accelerate marketplace growth and establish presence in the United States - currently the largest market for 3D models. Prior to the round, CGTrader was self-sustainable, however, additional funding will enable us to grow faster and capitalize on the opportunity in the rapidly growing 3D market. We are very happy and proud to share that CGTrader currently unites more than 1,100,000 professional 3D designers from all over the world, a figure that has doubled over the past year.

CGTrader co-founders Marius Kalytis and Dalia Lasaite

Sourcing 3D models from CGTrader library of more than 600,000 assets available can speed up 3D content creation significantly, and CGTrader is stepping up to become the top choice source for all creators. The need for quality 3D models is growing exponentially, and only working together we can enhance the traditional CG industries and make new 3D technologies stick. “While humans experience the world in three dimensions, most of technology apps today still require interaction with a flat screen in 2D. This is about to change. Enabled by technologies such as spatial computing, augmented reality (ARKit, ARCore, AR Studio), virtual reality and WebGL, 3D is becoming the next wave of content towards interactivity and immersion – moving from text to images to video to 3D. By far, the biggest bottleneck in this market is the high cost of 3D content creation. CGTrader is playing a significant role in reducing the cost as well as empowering developers to create 3D applications much faster and more efficiently.” – says Dalia Lasaite, CEO and co-founder of CGTrader.

“Karma Ventures decided to invest in CGTrader as we believe that the importance of 3D content is going to grow significantly in the coming years and there is a great opportunity for CGTrader to become the largest provider of 3D models in the world,” said Kristjan Laanemaa, partner at Karma Ventures. “We have been following the company for a number of years and think that the team has done excellent job in establishing the company as one of the major sources of 3D models. Their track record convinced us that by having more resources they can scale the business and become the global leader in this space.”

We are very happy that Karma Ventures is joining CGTrader as investor” says Donatas Keras, a partner at Practica Capital.” We have been with the company from early days and the journey was very interesting. Now, with additional resources and experience brought by Karma, we see even more possibilities for the company.”
CGTrader team in Startup Olympics 2017. Photo by Matas Dauginis