Chaotic Moon Studios is an American creative technology studio focused on
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
,
mobile development
Mobile app development is the act or process by which a mobile app is developed for mobile devices, such as personal digital assistants, enterprise digital assistants or mobile phones. These software applications are designed to run on mobile ...
and
design
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...
. Chaotic Moon was founded in 2010 in
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
. After several years of growth and acquisitions, Chaotic Moon opened a second
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
location in 2015.
History
Chaotic Moon was founded in March 2010 by Ben Lamm,
Whurley (William Hurley) and Mike Erwin. In 2012, they launched Chaotic Moon Labs, a research and development division that involved into BASE, their in-house innovation lab.
*
* March 2013 - Hollywood talent agency
William Morris Endeavor
Endeavor Group Holdings, Inc. (formerly known as William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, WME or WME-IMG) is an American holding company for talent and media agencies with its primary offices in Beverly Hills, California, United States. The compa ...
, in conjunction with their technology investment and equity partner
Silver Lake Partners
Silver Lake is an American global private equity firm focused on investments in technology, technology-enabled and related industries. Founded in 1999, the firm is one of the largest technology investors in the world. Its investment holdings have ...
, announced that they had taken a significant position in Chaotic Moon Studios.
*
* July 2015 - Chaotic Moon was acquired by consulting and technology services company
Accenture
Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A ''Fortune'' Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $61.6 billion in 2022. Accen ...
, as part of the company's interactive, social media and artificial intelligence division.
Divisions
Software
While Chaotic Moon is reported to have many projects for high-profile clients under NDA, some of the brands they’re known to have worked with include
News Corp
News Corporation, stylized as News Corp, is an American mass media and publishing company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The second incarnation of the original News Corporation, it was formed on June 28, 2013, following a ...
,
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...
,
Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut is an American multinational restaurant chain and international franchise founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas by Dan and Frank Carney. They serve their signature pan pizza and other dishes including pasta, breadsticks and dessert at d ...
,
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelv ...
,
CBS Sports
CBS Sports is the sports division of the American television network CBS. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on W 52nd Street (Manhattan), 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS ...
,
Sanrio
is a Japanese entertainment company. It designs, licenses, and produces products focusing on the '' kawaii'' ("cute") segment of Japanese popular culture. Their products include stationery, school supplies, gifts, and accessories which are sold ...
,
Betty Crocker
Betty Crocker is a brand and fictional character used in advertising campaigns for food and recipes. The character was originally created by the Washburn-Crosby Company in 1921 following a contest in the ''Saturday Evening Post''. In 1954, ...
,
Starbucks
Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain.
As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 ...
,
Best Buy
Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...
,
Groupon
Groupon is an American global e-commerce marketplace connecting subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, travel, goods and services in 13 countries. Based in Chicago, Groupon was launched there in November 2008, launching soon af ...
and
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Chan ...
Chaotic Moon has an in-house R&D team, known for their creative innovations. The team created the SmartestCart, a “smart” shopping cart capable of following the user around the store, making suggestions for the grocery list and meal ideas, keeping track of allergies and allowing the user to bypass the checkout line. The company also created Tech Tats, an exploration into the use of skin-mounted components and conductive paint to create circuitry that lives on the human body in the form of a tattoo that has the capability to collect, store, send and receive data. Chaotic Moon has created two fitness tracking apparatuses: Fitcoin, which paid the user for their workout in Bitcoin, and a fitness tracker for wheelchair users that also gathers data that can be used for terrain mapping. Other notable projects include Sentiri, a proximity-sensing headband; Blue Eyes, a camera-equipped drone mounted to the roof of a police car that can take off and record an encounter from above; and a motorized skateboard, referred to as the Board of Awesomeness, that was showcased at South by Southwest in 2012. It reaches a top speed of 32 mph.
Games & Experiences
Among notable games that Chaotic Moon has created are two
virtual-reality experiences.
Shark Punch combined the Leap Motion device with the
Oculus Rift
Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Meta Platforms, released on March 28, 2016.
In 2012 Oculus initiated a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Rift's development, a ...
for a game in which users were immersed in a virtual environment where they fought off sharks. Death From Above allowed for a two-player VR experience: player one ran the virtual reality driving game on a
PC and player two used an
iPad
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operati ...
that communicates directly with the game in real time.
Acquisitions
Chaotic Moon Studios has made a series of acquisitions since its inception in 2010. Two such public acquisitions were Dollar App and Symbiot Security. In May 2012, Chaotic Moon acquired Dollar App,
[Sarah Drake]
“Austin startup Chaotic Moon buys Dollar App,”
''Austin Business Journal
American City Business Journals, Inc. (ACBJ) is an American newspaper publisher based in Charlotte, North Carolina. ACBJ publishes The Business Journals, which contains local business news for 44 markets in the United States, Hemmings Motor New ...
'', May 31, 2012. a
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
-based mobile app developer founded in 2008 by Dom Sagolla. That same year, Dollar App developed
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
’s official
iPhone presidential campaign app. Dollar App became Chaotic Moon’s
Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
satellite studio, with Sagolla staying on as chief product officer.
Later in 2012, Chaotic Moon Studios purchased information and risk metrics security management company Symbiot Security. Symbiot, which was also co-founded by Hurley,
[“BMC’s William Hurley talks up open source,”](_blank)
''CIO
CIO may refer to:
Organizations
* Central Imagery Office, a predecessor of the American National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
* Central Intelligence Office, the national intelligence agency of the former Republic of Vietnam
* Central Intellige ...
'', November 27, 2007. previously specialized in providing information security for the US government and military, as well as corporate clients.
In July 2015, Chaotic Moon was acquired by consulting and technology service company Accenture.
[Sarah Buhr, TechCrunch. �]
Chaotic Moon Sells to Accenture
” July 22, 2015. August 24, 2015.
References
{{Reflist, 2
Companies based in Austin, Texas
American companies established in 2010
2010 establishments in Texas
Silver Lake (investment firm) companies