Advanced Television

Unity completes Weta Digital acquisition

December 2, 2021

Unity, the platform for creating and operating real-time 3D (RT3D) content, has completed the acquisition of Weta Digital’s tools, pipeline, technology, and engineering talent first reported last month.

Unity said the acquisition is designed to empower the growing number of game developers, artists, and potentially millions of consumer creators with sophisticated content creation tools used in some of the world’s most iconic movies and television shows, such as Avatar, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, The Suicide Squad, and more.

In addition to acquiring dozens of tools, a foundational data platform for interoperable 3D art creation, and a library of thousands of assets, Unity welcomes Weta Digital’s engineering talent of 275 engineers.

“We are thrilled to officially welcome Weta Digital’s highly talented engineering team to Unity and to begin the journey of integrating two powerhouse technologies,” said Marc Whitten, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Create Solutions at Unity. “By bringing this team and technology to Unity, we can enable more storytellers to reach their creative potential by giving them access to the diamonds of all diamonds of VFX tools,  underpinned by the power of real-time 3D.”

Weta Digital’s Academy Award-Winning VFX teams will continue as a standalone entity known as WetaFX under majority ownership by Peter Jackson and helmed by CEO Prem Akkaraju.

“I know Weta Digital’s journey with Unity has just begun and I’m more confident than ever that Unity is the company to take this technology to a broader market,” said Akkaraju. “The decision to make our tools accessible to the wider market was ultimately driven by our goal of inspiring other creators. I’ve said this before, but in my view, Weta is Jimi Hendrix, and our hope is that by encouraging more artists to play, we’ll see the world has many, many more Jimi Hendrixes.”

The transaction closed on December 1, 2021 and under the terms of the agreement, Unity acquired Weta Digital’s tools, pipeline, technology, and engineering talent for $1.62 billion (€1.4bn) in a combination of cash and stock. Unity will not be relocating employees with this acquisition and remains supportive and committed to Wellington, New Zealand.

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