Roblox Acquires Loom.ai, Accelerating Development of Avatar Realism and Emotions

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Roblox, a global online platform bringing millions of people together through play, announced today the acquisition of Loom.ai, a privately-held company specializing in real-time facial animation technology for 3D avatars, using deep learning, computer vision, and VFX.

“We believe as people share experiences virtually, their avatars should have the ability to express a full range of emotions,” said David Baszucki, CEO of Roblox. “Loom.ai will accelerate making human co-experiences more immersive and personal, adding world-class facial animation technology as part of Roblox’s efforts to provide expressive emotive actions to avatars that will enable deeper connections for our community.”

With the team and technology behind Loom.ai, Roblox will accelerate the development of next-generation avatars. Loom.ai’s technology enables immersive social experiences, allowing players to show their emotions and facial expressions in life-like ways. Roblox players can imagine watching their favorite music artist singing with facial expressions during a virtual concert or communicating with friends in a life-like, interactive way when playing together on the platform.

“From our very first meeting with David Baszucki, it was clear we share a vision where art and engineering meet to create an exciting range of personalized avatars and characters,” said Kiran Bhat, co-founder of Loom.ai. “We will continue our work on that vision to bring real-time and real-life emotions to every Roblox avatar.”

“We’re thrilled to join forces with Roblox to bring real-time facial expressions to the 36 million Roblox avatars playing every day in the metaverse,” said Mahesh Ramasubramanian, co-founder of Loom.ai. “Roblox has created an incredible community, and we see a perfect fit for Loom.ai’s advanced 3D avatar technologies to bring shared experiences to the next level.”

About Roblox

Roblox’s mission is to build a human co-experience platform that enables shared experiences among billions of users. Every day, more than 36 million people around the world have fun with friends as they explore millions of immersive digital experiences. All of these experiences are built by the Roblox community, made up of over five million creators. We believe in building a safe, civil, and diverse community—one that inspires and fosters creativity and positive relationships between people around the world. For more information, please visit corp.roblox.com.