Blaxxun Interactive, originally named "Black Sun Interactive", was one of the first companies to develop a 3D community platform designed for the Internet using

VRML VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language, pronounced ''vermal'' or by its initials, originally—before 1995—known as the Virtual Reality Markup Language) is a standard file format for representing 3-dimensional (3D) interactive vector graph ...

and highly scalable multi-user server environments.

Company history

Blaxxun was founded in August 1995 with its sales/marketing offices in San Francisco, CA and management/development in Munich, Germany. blaxxun was funded by the US venture capital company CMGI, in the same portfolio as leading Internet companies like GeoCities and Lycos. Later blaxxun investors included tbg and General Electric. Blaxxun developed various 3D browsers and multi-user server platforms. Customers included BMW ("3D Car Configurator"), Deutsche Bank ("Virtual Shareholder Meeting"), IBM (3D Notebook Demo), Canal+ ("Virtual Paris"), Siemens, Intel, and many other major brands. In 1996, Blaxxun acquired

Cybertown Cybertown (CT) (formerly Colony City) was a free (changed to pay per year in 2002), family friendly, online community. There were places (chat rooms) available either through a 2D or 3D chat environment. Users were able to have jobs within the c ...

, a US-based community and evolved it into a 3D community that attracted more than 1 million registered users by 2000. blaxxun also established joint ventures with Germany's leading publisher Cornelsen (3D community Learnetix) and the soccer community SoccerCity (in collaboration with Kicker magazine). In 2000, Blaxxun was scheduled for an

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

at Germany's Neuer Markt. The IPO was delayed and finally failed in August 2000, when the Internet boom turned into the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

. blaxxun's IPO consortium banks had a public disagreement about the cancellation, as the IPO was oversubscribed by a factor of 2.5 on the institutional side. In 2001, blaxxun became shortly profitable and succeeded in raising more funding, but then was also hit by collapsing Internet revenues. In early 2002, Blaxxun went out of business. Some assets were taken over by successor companies. Blaxxun Technologies continued to market the core server technologies. Bitmanagement Software continued to develop the 3D client. Cybertown was given back to the founders and was later sold.

References

{{reflist, 2 Virtual reality Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct software companies of the United States 1995 establishments in California Software companies established in 1995 Companies established in 1995

Company history

See also

References