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New York-based travel tech company Headouthas acquired Dabble, a Toronto-based virtual photo studio for ecommerce.

Headout will use Dabbles’s offerings to build AI-powered travel experiences for its users. By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), Dabble allows users to generate product images for ecommerce brands to enhance their content marketing efforts.

“The Dabble team sits at the cutting edge of the intersection of AI, computer vision and new media–a combination that makes them perfectly placed to help accelerate our mission of getting everyone to head out to the world’s best real life experiences,” said Varun Khona, CEO and Co-founder, Headout. 

Headout already utilises AI for various features, including experiential media, content creation, and fraud prevention. To date, the startup has secured over $60 million in funding.

The company says the Dabble team will help enhance its overall AI initiatives and focus on integrating new user experiences, both in the discovery phase and during the actual delivery of the experience.

“We are huge believers in the positive impact of the age of AI. We foresee a world with improved human productivity and creativity freeing us up to make time for things that truly matter,” said Khona.

“From our very first meeting with the Dabble team, it was clear that we share a common ethos in leveraging AI to make a more human, a more joyful and a more magical world. I can’t wait to share and show some of the technology we are working on to make the best real life experiences even better in the coming months,” he added. 

Backed by American venture capital firm Y Combinator, Version One, and others, Dabble claims to be one of earliest AI platforms to enable image recognition and augmented reality (AR) on mobile devices. 

The startup has also implemented immersive AR and VR (virtual reality) experiences at multiple large venues across North America. It has deep expertise in the design and technical challenges of building location-aware technologies.

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“What made us swipe right on Headout was our shared vision that AI can transform the way people experience the physical world around them,” said Neil Mathew, Co-founder and CEO of Dabble. 

“With recent breakthroughs in large language models, computer vision, and immersive content, a disruptive transformation in real life experiences is inevitable and Headout is perfectly positioned to lead the charge as a managed marketplace curating only the world’s best real life experiences,” he added.

Dabble has developed a computer vision and immersive 3D platform that has created new design approaches for real-world applications, such as indoor navigation, gaming, workplace instruction, and industrial asset examination. Its developer resources have been employed by 15,000 developers and rolled out across more than 3 lakh devices, including drones, smart cameras, and mobile phones.

Founded in 2014 by Vinod Khona, Vikram Jit Singh, and Suren Sultania, Headout enables users in exploring and reserving tours, activities, events, and local experiences worldwide.

The firm has nine global offices, including one in Bengaluru, and operates in over 125 cities worldwide. It caters to more than 27 million individuals from 196 countries, who have participated in its experiences.