2 on a Friday: Chaos buys into archviz and Modelon announces Q1 results

The beginning of the week featured Memorial Day here in the US and the week ends with the Jubilee of the Queen of England. The combo seems to have created a slow news week — but here are two interesting things to know about:

First off, Chaos, the company that makes the V-Ray series of photorealistic CPU and GPU rendering engines used in Autodesk’s 3ds Max, Tribles’ Sketchup, and probably other CAD-adjacent toolsets, announced that it has acquired CGarchitect, “the go-to community for architectural visualization” [apparently known among cool kids as archviz].

The important bit: Chaos’ announcement said, “To celebrate CGarchitect’s new home at Chaos, we’re making it completely free.” More details here.

And finally, Modelon, maker of the Impact systems modeling and simulation software, announced Q1 results in May — I clearly missed the company’s IPO a year ago and have a lot to catch up on. Q1 2022 revenue was SEK 18 million (about $2 million), with the company reporting a net loss that “reflects the ongoing investment phase for accelerated growth”. Software revenue was up 32% over a year ago and grew from 43% to 65% of total revenue in Q1 2021 and Q1 2022, respectively.

This, said CEO Magnus Gäfvert in a press release, “illustrates the strategic shift towards product license revenues from the 2020 introduction of Modelon Impact … [F]rom 2018 through the first half of 2021, the early development of Modelon Impact was co-funded in partnership with a U.S. enterprise customer, with the customer funding recognized as services revenue … After Q2 2022, investors will more clearly be able to compare revenues and development costs on a like-for-like basis.”

The “Market response to our unique [Modelon Impact] cloud native solution and vision remains positive, with a growing following among potential customers. Current development is focused on further strengthening the cloud capabilities and scalability. Our industry experts are also evolving the workflow and library content in key application areas, such as hydrogen-based energy systems.”

Mr. Gäfvert concluded, “We head into the remaining quarters of 2022 with an increasing pipeline of exciting opportunities and an ambitious roadmap for Modelon Impact’s SaaS evolution.”

I will try to remember to report more consistently on Modelon.