Legend3D Closes $8M Round; Moves San Diego HQ Closer to Hollywood

Legend3D, which specializes in creating 3D visual effects for cinema and digital media, says today it has closed on $8 million in new funding, shortly after moving its headquarters from San Diego into a new “state-of-the-art, 60,000-square-foot studio in Carlsbad, CA.

Augustus Ventures and Northwater Capital Management led the deal, which was described as a Series B round in a statement from the company. Legend3D said it had raised $19 million from Northwater, Augustus, and other investors about 15 months ago in what was described at the time as a Series E round. A spokesman for the company did not immediately respond to a request to clarify the sequence of the funding rounds.

The company, founded in 2001 by Barry Sandrew as movie colorization specialist Legend Films, later transformed itself into a 3D visual effects and conversion company. Moving Legend3D’s corporate headquarters to Carlsbad makes the commute to Hollywood a little easier for the company’s executives.

The company established a new business division last year called Stereo Works that is dedicated to working more closely with Hollywood studios. The company also moved its Los Angeles office to Hollywood Center Studios to be closer to its entertainment client base.

In the statement, Legend3D CEO Brian Robertson says, “The funding reinforces the confidence our lead investors have in the directions we are taking in the growth of the company both domestically and internationally. Our extensive R&D investments are ensuring constant innovations in the development of market-leading software and systems, which has allowed us to marry the highest 3D conversion quality in the industry with highly competitive pricing.”

Using its patented 3-D conversion technology, Legend3D says its 3D special effects work includes “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” “Top Gun 3D,” “Hugo,” and “The Amazing Spider-Man.”

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.