Tech Firm Gets $6.5M Infusion

Herndon-based Reality Mobile is planning to announce on Thursday that it has secured $6.5 million in investment capital from a trio of companies largely rooted in the energy sector. The investment marks a move by the firm to reach beyond its current client roster, which consists mostly of government agencies.

The company says its flagship product, RealityVision, can securely transmit video images captured on cellphones or other devices live and in "real time" to other users on the service's network around the world. So far, the technology's customers have primarily been military, police or intelligence agencies that have typically used the technology for security at inside-the-Beltway events such as this year's presidential inauguration and Pope Benedict XVI's 2008 visit to Washington. The technology has also been used for security at the Academy Awards.

Now the company wants to expand into the energy market, saying that its video-streaming technology could be used to bring experts up to speed quickly in the event of an accident or disaster.

Leif André Skare, a partner at Energy Ventures, a Norwegian venture capital company that led the investment, said that the oil industry offers a likely market.

Running an oil rig, for example, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, so downtime is expensive; if there's a problem, transporting a consultant to a remote location can take considerable time and money.

"What Reality Mobile enables is for the person in the home office to stand in the shoes of the person of the field," Skare said. "On an operational basis, that can save an awful lot of money."

Chevron Technology Ventures, an investment division of the oil company, and communications industry investment firm Dobson Partnership also invested in the company this week.

Reality Mobile is opening a new office in Houston to pursue new oil company customers.

Patrick McVeigh, Reality Mobile's chairman, said that typically, a sale to a customer brings in $75,000 to $100,000, though some larger deals, in which customers need to link together a large number of people on the system, can bring in upward of seven figures.

The company was founded in late 2003, and spent its early years working mostly as a consulting firm. In its early days, the company advised government clients, primarily those in the intelligence-gathering business.

After a few years, the company began to develop a video streaming technology. In 2006, the FBI used a prototype of the technology as part of security for that year's Super Bowl.

The company's founder, David Rensin, previously founded Riverbed Technologies, a Vienna-based mobile computing software company. That company was sold to Aether Systems of Owings Mills, Md., for about $800 million in stock in 2000.