Ultrahaptics raises $23M Series B for ultrasound-based “touchless interfaces” that users can feel, bringing total raised to about $40M
As huge tech companies continue to dump money into VR and AR technology looking to convince us digital objects in front of us are actually real …
Context & Ripple Effects
Mid-2017 was when touchless input stopped being a lab demo and started drawing serious checks: within weeks of Ultrahaptics' $23M Series B, hand-tracking rival Leap Motion pulled in $50M from returning investors including a16z and Founders Fund. Both were riding the same wave described at the time — big tech pouring money into VR/AR and needing ways to make digital objects feel real.
That 2017 round now reads as early positioning rather than a dead end: Ultrahaptics evolved into Ultraleap and later closed an $82M Series D backed by Tencent for essentially the same ultrasound hand-tracking and touchless-interface stack, with adjacent specialists like HaptX and UltraSense Systems raising their own rounds along the way.
First-order effects
- The ~$40M war chest lets Ultrahaptics push its felt-but-touchless ultrasound interfaces out of demos and toward VR/XR headset makers hunting for input methods beyond handheld controllers.
- Leap Motion becomes the direct comparison case: two hand/interface startups raising large rounds in the same quarter means headset OEMs suddenly have competing interaction layers to evaluate rather than building input themselves.
Second-order effects
- Capital spreads down the sensing stack: HaptX raises a $12M Series A for haptic gloves in industrial VR and UltraSense a $20M Series B for gesture sensing through metal, glass, and wood — evidence that Ultrahaptics' round legitimized 'touchless interaction' as a fundable category rather than a one-off bet.
- Headset and device makers gain a supplier market for haptics and gesture input, shifting build-vs-buy decisions on the input layer toward buying specialist components.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, XR interaction consolidates around a handful of specialized input companies absorbed into headset platforms — the Tencent-backed Ultraleap round suggests strategic (not just financial) money deciding which interaction layers become standard.
- Regulation and standards stay quiet here, but the structural question the corpus sets up is whether touchless interfaces remain licensed component tech or get commoditized once a major platform ships its own equivalent.
The trend: XR input is emerging as a standalone venture category, with ultrasound haptics and hand-tracking startups raising progressively larger rounds ahead of headset-platform adoption.