“Designing augmented reality experiences for applications is still a very nascent field, requiring new tools and new thinking,” said Adam Debreczeni, co-founder of Fitness AR. “With the Unity Maps SDK, Mapbox is the leader in the exciting new space of AR and location. It’s thrilling to join the company at this stage to help build a team and show the world what’s possible if you mix real-time location data and AR.”
The growing team will work on building out the Mapbox native AR SDKs, designing real-world AR examples with Mapbox location data, and working closely together with Mapbox customers to help bring AR into their mobile applications. Focusing on practical projects such as travel, fitness/sports and weather applications, the team will be able to help developers move quickly from concept to working app by providing the building blocks that solve common problems.
“This is about building interactive experiences. AR is going to be bigger than the browser and bigger than mobile,” said Eric Gundersen, CEO of Mapbox. “The addition of Adam and Eric accelerates our play of building a world class team of designers and developers rooted in the future of AR. Not only is this critical to games and mobile apps, but also will enhance our AR guided navigation and enterprise data visualizations.”
Mapbox’s North American offices are based in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. Debreczeni and Florenzano will join a growing AR team and will be based in San Francisco, California. In Europe, Mapbox is expanding their offices in, Minsk and now Helsinki, hiring talent from the automotive, AI, AR, embedded systems, and gaming industries.