In 2016, Chris and I started Parsec with one goal: make a low latency remote desktop application performant enough to play PC games from anywhere, across any device. Our assumption was that if a technology was purposefully built to stream video at 60+ frames per second in HD quality while shaving as many milliseconds off the stream as possible, we could significantly expand the world's access to software, games, and tools. Even in those early days, we hoped that any ultra-low latency technology would be powered by Parsec.
Today, we have the pleasure to announce that Parsec has officially joined Unity, helping us accelerate toward that goal: democratizing access to all of the tools and software needed to build & enjoy interactive 3D experiences.
Thank you, thank you, you're far too kind
Almost five years ago, we launched the first version of Parsec and Chris shared his technical goals in a blog post. Over the course of those five years, there have been countless people supporting Parsec to help us get here. Most importantly, everyone who has been a member of the Parsec team deserves a massive congratulations and has earned our deepest gratitude for helping us build and define the world-class product Parsec has become.
The Parsec community (and their feedback) has also been an enormous source of inspiration. Their imaginative use cases, creative applications, and novel tools have repeatedly driven us to push the boundaries of what our technology can do. For nearly a year after our launch, we had fewer than one hundred active customers each day. That early feedback and those early needs helped define the product. Over time, as our community grew to hundreds of thousands of customers per week, the community’s passion stayed strong and helped support our development efforts. If you were there, thank you. Seriously.
To get this far, Parsec also required financial investments and expert advice. Notation, Lerer Hippeau, NextView, HP Ventures, Makers Fund, Mini Fund, Gridlov, MBK Capital, and Andreesen Horrowitz believed in us and saw how Parsec could change the way the world accesses software, content, and tools. We really appreciate your guidance and support.
Finally, although Chris and I are Parsec’s co-founders, our families (especially Megan and Allison) were with us at every step of this journey, supporting and encouraging us every day. Thank you.
We’ve only just begun
Through the verticals business at Unity and their relationship with 94 of the top 100 game studios in the world, the immediate impact Parsec can have on industrial and gaming use-cases is going to grow exponentially. We couldn’t think of a better company to help us accelerate in the short term while also expanding our opportunity to impact the future so dramatically.
Applications built with Unity are downloaded more than 5 billion times a month, reaching an average of 2.5 billion devices globally. We believe Parsecwill bring value to each and every Unity customer, as well as everyone interacting with real-time 3D (known for the rest of this post as “RT3D”).
The potential of our original goal expands further and further: Parsec can help convert anyone creating in 2D/non-interactive applications into creators of RT3D applications. We can simultaneously give creators the freedom to work from any device, at any time, on their own terms. We can push their experiences further by using Parsec streaming to deliver their interactive experiences to more consumers globally.
There are approximately 500 million high performance computers in the world with even fewer capable of running the most demanding software. Meanwhile, there are approximately 2.7 billion people who own a smartphone and 2 billion computers globally. With more than 7 billion people on the planet, you can quickly see that a vast majority of the world does not have the technology capable of running a RT3D application. But, with access to the internet and a low powered device, they can connect to hardware that gives them the opportunity to build, create, design, develop, and interact with a RT3D experience via Parsec.
Can we get much higher?
Over the next decade, hundreds of millions of people will become creators of RT3D interactive experiences. Democratizing access to the tools to create for the next phase of online consumer experiences is a mission we’re thrilled to be a part of. In the future, the digital and real worlds will blend together even further, moving from computer and phone screens to a pervasive and omnipresent digital world. Meeting the technical demands of this future is an enormous undertaking, let alone giving everyone the opportunity to edit and iterate upon this world. It’s pretty exciting.
Streaming real-time and interactive content from the cloud or another computer to your laptop, phone, AR glasses, and more will open up a plethora of opportunities for creators and anyone else to change the digital world around them. We’re just getting started. And within Unity, we have even greater resources and opportunities to help shape this future.
Credits
Although this isn’t everyone who has been part of this journey, we’d like to call out and thank this group for helping us build Parsec.
Team (in order of appearance): Jamie Blanks, Erik Nygren, Dan Applegate, Jake Lazaroff, Alex Chaparro, James Stringer, Josiah Savary, May Kim, Ronald Huveneers, Charlie Tran, Marco De la Cruz, Max Sebela, Jakob Wilkenson, Keith Cook, Wontae Yang, Binh Hoang, Callum Watson, Vince Auletta, Eric Fahs, Steve Kehaya, George Kehaya, Meg Esch, Jason Hart, Jim Coleman, Michael McCormack, Malyse McKinnon, Marcus Stoll, Mike Nicoli, Nicole Closson, Devin Kelly, Sam Leavens, Fernando Boom, Dave Doherty, Val Nuccio, Karthik Selvakumar, Justin Valletta, Martin Trang, Susanne Blix, Zac Overson, Adrienne Merrick-Tagore, Paul Johns, Andrew Koonmen, Erin Boardman, Gabrielle Lysenko, Fernando Martinez, Kelli Branam, Darius Iglesias, Avery Vernon-Moore, James King III, JonnyLee Giard
Advisors: Shafqat Islam, Asif Rahman, Eros Resmini, Monte Ford, and Joost van Dreunen
Contractors: Richard Vinicius Gerotto Silva, Max Morris, Omar Panduro, Ignacio Ramirez
Investors: Notation Capital, Lerer Hippeau, NextView, HP Ventures, Makers Fund, Mini Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Gridlov L.P., MBK Capital
