Press

Augmented Reality is for Everyone

Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, 8th Wall is on a mission to make augmented reality accessible to everyone. 8th Wall is Niantic Inc.'s award-winning AR developer platform and computer vision technology stack that makes it possible to build interactive web-based augmented reality (WebAR) that can be experienced on any smartphone—no app required. 8th Wall WebAR experiences can be accessed and engaged by over 5 billion smartphones across iOS and Android as well as computers and AR/VR/MR headsets. For the first time, brands and developers can offer World Effects, Lightship VPS, Face Effects and Image Target augmented reality experiences to users with the same ease as accessing a webpage in the browser.

Since its first full year in 2019, the 8th Wall platform has powered over 2,000 commercial experiences for top-tier brands across industry verticals including sports and entertainment, CPG, retail, fashion and beauty, automotive and more. WebAR activations powered by 8th Wall have demonstrated real business value, whether this is earning awards and making headlines, engaging millions of users or achieving ROI at every stage of the marketing funnel from dwell time to a lift in purchase.

8th Wall’s complete set of tools, including the 8th Wall AR Engine and Cloud Editor, equips developers with everything they need to succeed with their WebAR content from development and testing to distribution and discovery.

The Tech

8th Wall ushered in WebAR with its computer vision SLAM (Simultaneous Location and Mapping) system hyper-optimized for the browser in 2018. Built entirely using standards-compliant JavaScript and WebGL, 8th Wall's AR Engine is a complete implementation of 8th Wall’s Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) engine, hyper-optimized for real time interactive browser-based AR. Features include 6-DoF (Six-Degrees-of-Freedom) Tracking, Lighting and Surface Estimation, Image Target Tracking (Flat and Curved), Lightship VPS and Face Effects.

In addition to 8th Wall’s powerful AR Engine, 8th Wall’s Cloud Editor is a cloud-based integrated development environment built from the ground up for WebAR and WebVR development. Among its many features, the 8th Wall Cloud Editor offers a cloud-based coding environment complete with integrated source control, commit history, live previewing, wireless remote debugging, and push-button publishing to a global CDN.

Meet the Founder

Erik Murphy-Chutorian is the Founder of 8th Wall, the world’s leading web-based augmented reality (WebAR) development platform, which has powered thousands of commercial experiences for leading brands across verticals including Sony Pictures, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Coca-Cola and more. He currently oversees 8th Wall for Niantic, which acquired the company in March 2022.

Erik has deep expertise in computer vision, imaging infrastructure, data analysis and full-stack/mobile product development. Prior to founding 8th Wall, he worked at both Facebook and Google as an Engineering Manager and Senior Staff Software Engineer respectively, leading the initiatives behind a number of key projects on Google Images and Google Photos.

Erik holds a PhD in computer vision from the University of California, San Diego and a BA in Engineering Physics from Dartmouth College.