WGI Ventures, LLC Announces Strategic Partnership/Investment – AR + VR Leader AKULAR
*WEST PALM BEACH, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 28, 2023 /* *WGI Ventures, LLC* (Ventures) is pleased to announce it established a strategic partnership with Arlington, Virginia-based *AKULAR*. The newly established partnership also includes a financial investment in AKULAR by Ventures. Headquartered in West Palm Beach, WGI Ventures is the infrastructure technology arm of WGI, Inc. (WGI), a national leader in providing technology-based design solutions for the construction of public infrastructure and real estate development.
AKULAR's competitive advantage rests in its ability to create and bring to life models of the built environment, across the entire value chain, from visualization to smart-asset digital twins. Its technology is agnostic to the base and operating models and can include any data sources and platform types. AKULAR's most notable clients include the United States Department of Homeland Security, Washington DC's Capital One Arena, ALEC Engineering and Contracting, Trammel Crow Company, WGI, and many other significant asset owners, designers, builders, and real estate firms around the globe.
The strategic partnership between Ventures and AKULAR aims to work with private organizations, and municipal, state, and federal agencies to create fully digitized, three-dimensional digital twin models to help them inventory and manage their hard-infrastructure assets in a real-time, cloud-based environment. Through their combined professional expertise, WGI and AKULAR will offer clients the ability to heighten accuracy, accelerate decision making, and realize enhanced operations and cost savings by using live digital models combined with WGI's robust infrastructure capabilities.
In a recent WGI and Columbia University study, the company found that both AR + VR and digital twins were cited by 570 industry practitioners as among the top five strategic technology trends with the most business impact on the infrastructure industry in 2023.
Ventures is a participant in AKULAR's seed investment round. In teaming with WGI's investment and innovation arm, the principals of AKULAR are partnering with an integrated firm that is leveraging tomorrow's technology, today. WGI's significant and forward-thinking investments in national thought leaders and digital tools supporting its work across the spectrum -- from placemaking and new mobility to heavy infrastructure -- are part of a strategic corporate plan for continued growth and success.
WGI Ventures President Gregory Sauter, architect of the Ventures-AKULAR deal, said, "I am excited to announce our strategic partnership with, and financial investment in, AKULAR. We are committed to ecosystem partners that can have real impact on the future of infrastructure. Today's infrastructure owners are beginning to understand the mission-critical advantages of having a functioning real-time model of their assets. This places the power of both real-time and trending data in an immersive visualized platform promoting timely and informed decision making."
The combination of Ventures, WGI, and AKULAR has applications across all WGI operations, from Geospatial to all infrastructure modes including large complex horizontal programs. As the partnership develops further, AKULAR's technologies will also enhance WGI's complete streets, placemaking, land planning, civil engineering, community digitization, and transportation planning service areas.
For AKULAR's part, the excitement is also unmistakable. AKULAR's Chief Executive Officer, Martin Rapos, stated, "The partnership with and investment from WGI Ventures is special. We have been working together to advance our technology, as well as how we jointly improve the experience and outcomes for WGI clients. We are both investing our time and talent to create something unique and powerful."
Prior to this pronouncement, Ventures also announced in 2020 that it entered a strategic partnership and financial investment with Jacksonville's Urban SDK. The investment in Urban SDK provided WGI Ventures a foothold in the data-analytics and predictive-intelligence platforms that improve data sourcing, reporting, and analysis, that ultimately increase safety and traffic flow on roadway networks. In 2022, Ventures acquired Winter Park, Florida-based Streamline Technologies, Inc. Streamline's ICPR modeling software is used by over 1,000 professional clients including many ENR 500 firms, as well as countless federal, state, and local agencies, and universities. Ventures also partnered with Shadow Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on intelligent investments in startup companies that innovate the built environment and is a limited partner in its Shadow Ventures Fund 3.
*ABOUT WGI*
WGI Ventures, LLC. is the venture arm of WGI, Inc., a multidisciplinary solutions-providing consulting firm with 19 offices in eight states, serving an active client base in over 39 states. In 2022, Engineering News-Record (ENR) Magazine ranked WGI #167 - up 8 places -- on its list of the Top 500 Design Firms while The South Florida Business Journal ranked WGI #4 on its 2022 Top 25 Engineering Firms. ENR had previously named WGI its 2021 Design Firm of the Year in the southeast United States. WGI was the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) 2022 Grand Award winner for its efforts on Wekiva Parkway Section 6. For more information, please visit www.wginc.com.
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*WGI Company Contacts:*
Gregory Sauter, P.E., President
Gregory.Sauter@WGInc.com
561.687.2220
Nick Evans, Chief Innovation Officer
Nicholas.Evans@WGInc.com
214.307.4767
*Media Contact:*
Kelly Owens
Alchemy Communications Group
ko@alchemycommgroup.com
561.222.4958 (mobile)
561.935.9953 x101 (office)
*SOURCE: *WGI Ventures
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