A report from the Monetary Instances maintains Meta is presently in talks with AR headset creator Magic Leap to strike a multiyear deal, which may embrace mental property licensing and contract manufacturing of AR headsets in North America.
The AR unicorn is claimed to own precious IP concerning customized elements, together with its optics, waveguides, and software program.
It’s mentioned a possible deal might also permit Meta to minimize its reliance on China for part manufacturing. In 2019, Magic Leap partnered with manufacturing options firm Jabil to create a Guadalajara, Mexico plant which the report maintains can assemble headsets in “the tens of hundreds a 12 months.”
Citing individuals with data of the talks, the report maintains nevertheless a particular joint Meta-Magic Leap headset isn’t anticipated.
Whereas each corporations didn’t touch upon a possible partnership, Magic Leap mentioned this to the Monetary Instances:
“Given the complexities of growing true augmented actuality applied sciences and the intricacies concerned with manufacturing these optics, in addition to the problems many corporations expertise with abroad provide chain dependencies, we now have entered into a number of non-exclusive IP licensing and manufacturing partnerships with corporations trying to enter the AR market or broaden their present place.”
Because it exited stealth in 2014, Magic Leap has launched two AR headsets, Magic Leap 1 and Magic Leap 2, which have been in contrast in performance to Microsoft’s HoloLens AR headsets.
The corporate has raised over $4 billion, with minority traders together with Google, Alibaba, Qualcomm, AT&T, and Axel Springer. Its majority stakeholder is Saudi Arabia’s state-owned sovereign wealth fund.
Along with Quest Professional combined actuality headset, Meta has confirmed it’s presently engaged on its subsequent iteration of Quest, doubtless Quest 3, in addition to its personal AR glasses. Meta began real-world testing of Undertaking Aria in 2020, a platform for coaching its AR notion techniques and asses public notion of the expertise.
