While this would be a substantial down valuation compared to the $800m pre-money valuation for NextVR’s $80m series B round in August 2016, it is also a positive sign for the overall augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) industry when a so-called big ugly – the less-than-flattering name given by some VCs to the US, cash-rich corporations, such as Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon – buys in.
As former Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans said in his weekly newsletter: “Apple has sat out VR so far (and no-one has come up with any content other than hard-core games that really works), but is clearly very interested in AR glasses – glasses that can map the room, understand what you’re seeing and place things in the world in front of you.
“There are rumours that both AR and VR devices are imminent (two to three years) but that rumour has been around for, well, two to three years. Certainly, if Apple does launch something it will want to have some real use cases and content in place pre-launch, which is why it’s putting so much effort into AR on the phone and put Lidar into the new iPad: to seed the market for glasses.”
Apple’s move for NextVR, if confirmed, follows Facebook’s purchase of UK-based Plessey’s stock of AR-applicable technology (also covered in our weekly podcast).
The delightful big uglies term came from an insightful article as ever by the Economist on the culling of the unicorn herd as the flywheel effects develop friction for those that just use tech rather than are tech companies.
Also good is Pitchbook’s weekend read by Kevin Dowd who’s as ever doing a nice job curating the big stories of the week and is spot on about the division in performance between those unicorns that help users do things, and those that help users get things. The too-long; didn’t read (TL;DR) highlight is the former have struggled with the lockdown but the latter are challenged by worker rights.
And this issue of worker compensation will rise up the political and corporate agenda after more than a decade of returns flowing to capital rather than labour as part of an unprecedented gearing up of the economy. For a macro perspective on how we can deleverage successfully it will require this imbalance to be adjusted.
