Peggy Johnson is Out at Magic Leap, Replaced by Ross Rosenberg. The former Qualcomm and Microsoft executive, joined the company in 2020 to refocus it on enterprise as it launched the Magic Leap 2. Rosenberg was previously an exec at Belden, Inc. and First Solar.
It’s Big Tech Earnings week, featuring Meta, Google and Microsoft, which was the big winner with an AI- expanding cloud business. Meta’s Metaverse beatings are back. The XR division lost $3.7 billion last quarter. You gotta be making some real dough to sustain a blow like that every few months. They say Meta was rescued by AI, which is how they are now referring to the algorithms that run their newsfeeds. Despite increased revenue, with the economy booming and more interest rate increases ahead, growth stocks, and the entire tech sector in particular, took it on the chin this week.
Theil Makes $68M Investment in Quantum SystemsEuro Drone Program. Drones have become the most accurate and lethal weapon in the Ukraine War, so unsurprisingly it is now a high growth sector of the defense industry.
Threedium Secures $11 Million Series A. Their software allows users to create 3D assets from 2D photos. The round was led by Interpublic Group and Olma Partners with additional support from Mesh Consensys, Reflexive Capital, Nirvana Family Office, Lyra Ventures, Edenbase, and Kinisis Venture Fund I.
The Humane AI Pin Launches November 9th The battle of the AI assistants, co-pilots, or chatbot is on, and the upstart, a wearable stand alone microcomputer, is launching in two weeks. Other than the Apple-bred owners of Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhr, their $230 fundraise, and a tantalizing Ted talk, we know little about what’s in store. Inverse wrote this in-depth story on them earlier this month.
Google announces tools to help users fact-check images. Google is announcing it will provide more contextual information about an image to prevent false information from spreading. The new set of tools includes viewing an image’s history, metadata and the context users used it with on different sites. The new image tools are available by clicking the three-dot menu on Google Images results.
ByteDance Says They’re Committed to Pico VR. No one is quite sure why. Rumors stick because they have truth-iness. They play to our preconceptions, our misconceptions and prejudices. There’s no way Bytedance can muster the kind of ad blitz you’d need to make a dent in Meta’s market share.
Unlike Rokid, TCL, and XReal, we’ve never given Nimo a try but they sound freaking great. Can’t wait to take them for a spin. I’ve been predicting the breakthrough of such a device for years. Could I finally be right? A 3DOF headset would be fine if the user is stationary. The $1299 Nimo has its own palm sized GPU. The video above emphasizes the anchored multi-screen interface, which will produce screens that appear to be 130 inches.
Old game. New tricks. The new mixed reality mode release of “Drop Dead: The Cabin – Home Invasion” brings a zombie invasion right to your living room with Quest 3 for just $24.99. With the Quest 3’s room scanning sensors, I expect this in-home monster hooter to be a new genre.
UI/UX designer Nicolas Neubert with AI technology, created this AI film with Canadian rapper JUGGER as part of his debut album PUPPET MASTER on Red Bull Records/Wonderchild records today. .
This Week in XR is also a podcast hosted by the author of this column, Ted Schilowitz, Futurist, Paramount Global, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is legendary music producer, executive, composer and Albhy Galuten. As a music producer he was responsible for over a dozen number one hits. As an executive and technologist, he shephered Universal Musical into the digital era. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.
What We’re Reading
Best Augmented Reality Games for Mobile
How Meta and AI companies recruited striking actors to train AI (Eillen Guo/MIT Technology Review)
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