A report from the Monetary Occasions maintains Meta is at the moment in talks with AR headset creator Magic Leap to strike a multiyear deal, which may embody mental property licensing and contract manufacturing of AR headsets in North America.
The AR unicorn is alleged to own precious IP relating to customized parts, together with its optics, waveguides, and software program.
It’s stated a possible deal might also permit Meta to reduce its reliance on China for element 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 1000’s a 12 months.”
Citing folks with information 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 stated this to the Monetary Occasions:
“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 have now entered into a number of non-exclusive IP licensing and manufacturing partnerships with corporations trying to enter the AR market or increase 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 blended actuality headset, Meta has confirmed it’s at the moment engaged on its subsequent iteration of Quest, probably Quest 3, in addition to its personal AR glasses. Meta began real-world testing of Venture Aria in 2020, a platform for coaching its AR notion programs and asses public notion of the expertise.