With would-be unicorns Magic Leap and Niantic among its investments, Google is an active investor in augmented reality technology. This week, the search giant experienced both ends of the investment cycle, with an exit via Lyft's acquisition of Blue Vision Labs, and a funding round for Resolution Games.
Four augmented reality companies made deals this week to grow their businesses. Two companies, TechSee and Car360, completed funding rounds, while DAQRI signed with a production partner and Decalomania landed a prime spot with a top retailer.
After a $20 million funding round fell through, augmented reality headset maker Meta Company has been forced to furlough (or place on temporary leave of absence) approximately 65% of its workforce for 30 days.
The display is one of the most critical components in augmented reality hardware, and on Tuesday, one of the companies making that component, Avegant Corp., closed a funding round of $12 million to support development of next-generation AR displays.
Augmented reality device maker Vuzix has filed a defamation lawsuit asking for $80 million in punitive damages, money damages, and interest against a short seller who has publicly claimed that the Amazon Alexa functionality of the company's Blade smartglasses is fraudulent.
Augmented reality business followers, we've got good news and bad news. First, the good news: Upskill closed another round of funding, this time led by strategic investors Cisco and Accenture. (Well, this is probably bad news if you're competing with them on the enterprise AR front.)
Update: Monday, 11 p.m. ET: In a report from Bloomberg, eMagin CEO Jeffrey Lucas has contradicted what appeared to be investor information found in SEC filings that surfaced on Monday. Although Apple is listed among several other investors in the company in filing, Lucas told Bloomberg that Apple is not, in fact, an investor in the company. Offering further clarification, Lucas told the news site that eMagin "listed those companies in the filing because it had discussions with them at industr...
Augmented reality software maker Upskill has released the latest version of their Skylight platform, adding a number of new tools to ease implementation and improve functionality for enterprises, including a new application builder.
Tim and Kevin meet up/hang out & talk their talk. They discuss buying domain names, choosing business names, starting companies, and selling books by their color. These two entrepreneurs have lots to teach us about selling ideas and making profitable businesses.
In a bad economy, starting your own business is hard, even if you know everything about a business plan. And lots of people have ideas to start a business, but starting a successful business takes more than a good idea, it takes planning.
Starting an independent record label, like starting any other business, requires a well-conceived plan with clear goals. Check out this tutorial and learn how to take your love of music and turn a profit.
In this video we learn how to strategically buy stocks in a bear market. In the last bear market, we were able to buy high quality stocks for a great price. These are great times for value investors to purchase cheap stocks and see their share prices go up as the economy becomes better. You also want the company to rise and become more popular so you are getting more of a return after the stocks that you have bough in the first place. When you do this, you can reinvest after this and get a lo...
In this tutorial, we learn how to understand a securitization. This is a type of structured finance that has three key elements. the first is that there is a pooling of credit sensitive assets. In pooling the assets, you introduce diversification. The second element is to transfer credit risk to the third party and make rules around whether there has been a true transfer of credit risk. The third element in this is trenching of liabilities. This means when cash flows are transferred to a spec...
While the rest of the world is scrambling to figure out how to adopt augmented reality and VR tools for remote meetings, one company is building its war chest to serve the growing space of corporate clients who need this kind of immersive computing training.
Despite the recent gut punch of staff layoffs, Canada-based smartglasses startup North and its Focals are likely to be in the game for a while longer.
With plans to compete with Niantic and other augmented reality game developers, game developer WarDucks has closed a $3.8 million funding round.
Last year's augmented reality investments roundup was impressive. And in 2018, the dollars flowing toward AR haven't decreased, as venture capitalists and strategic investors continue to aggressively fund AR startups at a rapid pace.
Investors continue to bet on augmented reality, both for short-term returns and long-term plays. This week, Niantic reportedly picked up another round of funding from Samsung and others, based on the success of PokémonGO and the prospects for future revenue. Likewise, investors see value in WaveOptics, whose waveguide displays could make consumer smaller AR smartglasses possible within the next year.
In a recent series of tweets, investor and entrepreneur (and NR50 member) Amitt Mahajan summarized the challenges and opportunities for iOS developers looking to leverage Apple's ARKit for augmented reality experiences.
All you paying Spotify users are about to get another exclusive privilege besides getting out of all those annoying "Ever wonder what it would be like to have Spotify premium?" ads. The Sweden-based company is looking to lower the royalty fees they have to pay to major record labels for their music, by compromising on their policy that all their music be free to paying and nonpaying users. Spotify would for a limited time restrict access on major album releases to their paying subscribers.
When the announcement of the Cheddar app for Magic Leap first went out on Tuesday morning, the app was not available on my updated Magic Leap One (located in New York City). However, after checking throughout the day, I can confirm that the app is now live.
Some investors play the short game, placing their bets on industries that show the quickest return on their investment, and, in the augmented reality space, that means the enterprise sector.
The recent industry whispers in augmented reality are mostly about Apple and its rumored fashion-friendly smartglasses, but one company isn't waiting for the iPhone heavyweight to enter the fray.
Augmented reality optics maker WaveOptics has just infused its operations with a fresh round of funding to facilitate its objective of bringing consumer-grade smartglasses at a $600 price point to market in 2019.
A Series B round of funding, totaling $30 million, will enable Helsinki-based startup Varjo to launch its industrial-grade augmented and virtual reality headset capable of "human-eye resolution" before the end of the year.
Modern "mad men" are buying into augmented reality for marketing, with the two latest examples being trendy burger maker Bareburger and department store chain Zara.
The augmented reality business was all about audiences this week. Vuzix looked for an audience with the Supreme Court of New York regarding a defamation lawsuit against an investor. Magic Leap held an audience with royalty, showing off the Magic Leap One in a rare public appearance. And Snapchat wanted to remind its consumer audience of all the things its camera can do.
While the company is adamant that the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition will ship this year, currently, it seems its CEO is more interested in striking deals with content partners than releasing details about the headset.
The launch of the latest line of iPhones came and went without major revelations for advanced AR hardware other than the next iteration of processors and cameras.
Tesla's Autopilot self-drive interface in its new Model 3 signals the carmaker is already prepping its cars for Level 4 driving years ahead of the competition.
At the eMerge Americas investors conference in Miami, Florida, Magic Leap founder and CEO Rony Abovitz previewed details of the launch of their highly-anticipated device.
According to Electrek, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in a covert conference call with a select few investors, commented in detail about his plan to have Tesla's Model 3 driving on the road earlier than we all expected.
Bitcoin, the decentralized cryptocurrency notorious for its status as the currency of the dark web, seems to be shedding its shady past and is now enjoying soaring highs not seen since 2014. The highly volatile online commodity reached parity with an ounce of gold back in March amid speculation of a pending ETF approval from the Federal Trade Commission. Since then, Bitcoin has doubled in value and analysts predict a bitcoin could reach $100,000 in value in 10 years.
Is the augmented reality magic fading down in Plantation, Florida? That's the first question some may be asking following a casual revelation over the weekend that Magic Leap, the maker of the Magic Leap One, has assigned much of its patent portfolio over to JP Morgan Chase as collateral.
While Magic Leap turned heads at the Game Developers Conference with AR experiences at the Unity and Unreal Engine booths, news broke that the company was the winning bidder for ODG's patents.
As the calendar year (and, for many companies, the fiscal year) comes to a close, it appears 2017 may stand as the new high-water mark for investment in augmented and virtual reality technology.
It looks like Jaunt's pivot from VR to volumetric captures services for augmented reality experiences has paid off.
While the tech industries giants and eager startups chase the dream of widespread consumer augmented reality, enterprise AR is living the dream today.
Although Niantic is already an augmented reality startup unicorn thanks to the success of Pokémon GO, the company has reportedly captured yet another round of funding.
Smartglasses and AR headset makers like Microsoft, Magic Leap, and Google (and aspiring AR wearables makers like Apple and Snapchat) need display components for their products, and LetinAR is among the companies ready to supply those components.
