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 equipping developers, agencies and brands with the tools they need to create augmented reality that works in the browser (otherwise known as WebAR). With the world’s largest augmented reality platform, 8th Wall makes it possible for interactive augmented reality to work across iOS and Android devices with an estimated reach of 3.5 billion smartphones worldwide - all with no app required to download. For the first time, brands and developers can offer World Effects, 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 1,000 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) 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 and CEO of 8th Wall, the leading development platform for web-based augmented reality and virtual reality content (WebAR & WebVR). 8th Wall has powered over 1,000 commercial WebAR experiences across industry verticals, all of which require no app to download.

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.

Featured in