[NEWS] Another high-flying, heavily-funded AR headset startup is shutting down – Loganspace

Whereas Apple and Microsoft stress to sell augmented actuality because the subsequent predominant computing platform, hundreds of the startups aiming to beat them to the punch are crashing and burning.

Daqri, which constructed endeavor-grade AR headsets, has shuttered its HQ, laid off hundreds of its workers and is selling off property ahead of a shutdown, worn workers and sources shut to the firm characterize TechCrunch.

In an e-mail got by TechCrunch, the nearly 10-year-light firm told its clients that it became as soon as pursuing an asset sale and became as soon as shutting down its cloud and tidy-glasses hardware platforms by the live of September.

“I have confidence the mammoth majority of oldsters who labored [at Daqri] are unhappy to gaze it closing down,” a worn worker told TechCrunch. “[I] desire the live result became as soon as assorted.”

The firm’s 18,000 sq. foot Los Angeles headquarters (above) isat declare listedas “readily available in the market” by valid property agency Newmark Knight Frank. The firm’s Sunnyvale offices seem to receive been shuttered sometime sooner than 2019.

Daqri’s shutdown is finest the most modern amongst heavily funded augmented actuality startups wanting for to court docket endeavor clients.

Earlier this year, Osterhout Abolish Crew unloaded its AR glasses patents after acquisition talks with Magic Jump, Fb and others stalled. Meta, an AR headset startup that raised $73 million from VCs together with Tencent, furthermore sold its property earlier this year after the firm ran out of cash.

Daqri confronted substantial challenges from competing headset makers, together with Magic Jump and Microsoft, who had been backed by more substantial warfare chests and institutional partnerships. Whereas the headset firm struggled to compete for endeavor clients, Daqri benefitted from investor excitement surrounding the broader house. That is, till the funding native climate for AR startups cooled.

Daqri became as soon as, at one point, talking with a mammoth non-public-equity agency about financing ahead of a capability IPO, but because the technical realities going thru other AR firms got right here to light, the agency backed out and the deal crumbled, we’re told.

As of mid-2017, aWall Street Journaldocument detailed that Daqri had raised $275 million in funding. You won’t web many crucial capabilities on the sources of that funding, besides references to Tarsadia Investments, a non-public-equity agency in Los Angeles that took allotment in the firm’s sole disclosed funding spherical. We’re told Tarsadia had taken controlling ownership of the agency after subsequent investments.

In early 2016, Daqri received Two Trees Photonics, a small UK startup that became as soon as building holographic declare technologies for car clients. The UK division soon comprised a substantial half of the complete firm’s revenues, sources characterize us. By early 2018, the division became as soon as spun out from Daqri as a separate firm referred to as Envisics, leaving the Daqri team to point of curiosity wholly on bringing augmented actuality to endeavor clients.

The final head-ragged AR division failed to manufacture momentum after prolonged setbacks in adoption of its AR tidy glasses, together with difficulties in training workers to order the futuristic hardware, a source told TechCrunch.

The total while, the firm’s leadership placed on a plucky face because the startup sputtered. In an interview this year with Cornell Endeavor Magazine, Daqri CEO Roy Ashok told the publication that the startup became as soon as forecasting shipments of “tens of thousands” of pairs of its AR glasses in 2020.

Daqri, its founder and quite a lot of other executives did no longer answer to requests for comment.