Google acquires cloud-based visual effects company Zync to join Cloud Platform team

Google announced on Tuesday that it has acquired cloud-based visual effects company Zync, which provided the rendering technology behind the movies Star Trek Into Darkness and Looper. Zync will be joining the Google Cloud Platform team, bolstering the company’s cloud-based offerings for creative professionals.

Zync Render is an in-house tool that provides integrated image rendering for visual effects professionals, offering users flexible solutions and greater creative freedoms with decreased longterm overhead and startup costs. The rendering tool has been used by over a dozen feature films and hundreds of commercials. 

Google product manager Belwadi Srikanth provided the following comment about the acquisition:

“Together  Zync and Cloud Platform will offer studios the rendering performance and capacity they need, while helping them manage costs.  For example, with per-minute billing studios aren’t trapped into paying for unused capacity when their rendering needs don’t fit in perfect hour increments.”

Zync also offered an official statement:

“Since its inception at visual effects studio ZERO VFX, nearly 5 years ago, ZYNC was designed to not only leverage the benefits and flexibilities inherent in cloud computing but to offer this in a user-friendly package. Pairing this history with the scale and reliability of Google Cloud Platform will help us offer an even better service to our customers – including more scalability, more host packages and better pricing (including per-minute billing). With a friction-free, affordable, and elastic rendering solution, visual designers and artists in the industry can continue to do their best work.”

Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.