Amazon buys 3D body scanning start-up Body Labs for $50-70M

Body Labs have announced that Amazon have acquired the start-up for an undisclosed amount. TechCrunch however have reported that the figure Amazon paid is between $50-70M.

Body Labs are a start-up from New York that incorporate body scanning into 3D technologies. The idea behind this is that with these scans, insights can be gained in the fashion market, and also in gaming. Body Labs is a very impressive startup: they use AI that can tell people apart from backgrounds to model them. The AI can also understand human-like movements and learn from this. This technology makes finding the right outfit far easier as it can model clothes on your 3D-scanned body. In addition, games involving virtual characters can benefit from the software through this extra personalisation.

Body Labs’ “SOMA” technology that they say is “human aware AI”, allows people to transform photos into 3D characters. Their app, Mosh, uses this. Through the uploading of an image, you can add filters that are similar to Snapchat’s but more advanced. If you want sparkles around your legs or to have tentacle arms, Mosh is the way to go. 3D scanning has been quieter then 3D printing in the last two years, so such a high-profile acquisition could be good for the tech’s visibility.

Body Labs tech in action on the Mosh app

50-70M: A huge figure?

Your first impressions of this might be that of disbelief – Body Labs was only established in 2013. How can Amazon pay $70m for a 4-year old company?! However, when you investigate further it starts to make sense. First of all, information is everything. This technology allows Amazon further insights into not just personal information like email addresses, but customers’ physical make-up like height and weight. This will allow Amazon to further tailor recommendations based on the data. This may allow CEO Jeff Bezos to expand his burgeoning Amazon Wardrobe service. The ability to know with more certainty if clothing will fit saves Amazon money through less returns, so in 10 years time perhaps this will be known as an incredible bargain.

You can visit Body Labs’ site here, and see the full TechCrunch report here.

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