On the cusp of a soon public listing, the gaming company Roblox says it’s acquired Loom.ai, a San Francisco-based startup that provides real-time facial animation technology for 3D avatars. The financial terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed.

Loom.ai was founded in 2016 and has since that time raised some $5.9 million in venture funding from investors including Samsung, DHVC, and Dentsu Ventures. The San Francisco-based company was founded by veterans from the film companies DreamWorks and Lucasfilm.

Roblox says it’ll integrate Loom.ai’s tech into its service to enable Roblox players to create enhanced 3D avatars. “We’re thrilled to join forces with Roblox to bring real-time facial expressions to the 36 million Roblox avatars playing every day in the metaverse,” said Mahesh Ramasubramanian, co-founder of Loom.ai, in a press statement.

Both Roblox and Loom.ai are based in San Francisco so there’ll likely be not much physical operational changes resulting from the acquisition, which comes just as Roblox is looking to go public after nearly a decade and a half as a privately-held company.

Roblox, a gaming platform targeted at kids, has a strong business that delivered nearly $500 million in revenue last year. In the nine months ended September this year, the company posted nearly $600 million in revenue.

Previously expected to go public this month, Roblox recently postponed its IPO to adjust pricing terms after witnessing the high pops of tech companies that debuted on the public markets this month, particularly DoorDash and Airbnb.

Photo: Roblox CEO David Baszucki by Fortune Conferences is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.

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