Virtuix offers a specialized treadmill that allows players to walk, run and jump when playing VR games or engaging in other virtual reality experiences.
Workrise, one of Austin s most heavily funded tech companies, has raised $300 million to accelerate its push beyond the oil and gas industry.
Founded in 2014, Workrise was launched as an online platform that connects oil and gas companies and service companies. Clients use the platform for recruiting and onboarding employees, ongoing worker management, training invoicing and payments.
Skilled laborers can use the platform to find work, while companies can use it to find trained workers.
Over the past two years, Workrise has expanded its reach to include wind, solar, construction, and defense industries. Its platform now matches workers with more than 500 companies in its network.
In another sign that economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is underway, Austin s unemployment rate last month fell below 5% for the first time since December 2020 and to its lowest point in a year.
As vaccine rollouts increased and businesses continued to reopen, the area s jobless rate decreased from 5.3% in March to 4.5% in April, according to new figures from the Texas Workforce Commission. The data include Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties.
The Austin region s April unemployment rate is now far below the pandemic peak of about 12% in April 2020. It has spent the past eight months hovering in a monthly range of about 5% to 6% which is roughly double pre-pandemic levels, as the area s jobless rate was 2.6% in February 2020.