Facebook is shopping for CTRL-labs, a NY-based startup constructing an armband that interprets motion and the wearer’s neural impulses into digital enter indicators, an organization spokesperson tells TechCrunch.
CTRL-labs raised $67 million in accordance with Crunchbase. The startup’s traders embody GV, Lux Capital, Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Spark Capital and Founders Fund, amongst others. Facebook didn’t disclose how a lot they paid for the startup, however we’re digging round.
Update: Bloomberg pegs the deal between $500 million and $1 billion. A supply near the matter tells TechCrunch the identical.
The acquisition, which has not but closed, will carry the startup into the corporate’s Facebook Reality Labs division. CTRL-labs’ CEO and co-founder Thomas Reardon, a veteran technologist whose accolades embody founding the group at Microsoft that constructed Internet Explorer, might be becoming a member of Facebook, whereas CTRL-labs’ workers may have the choice to do the identical, we’re instructed.
Facebook has talked rather a lot about engaged on a non-invasive mind enter gadget that may make issues like textual content entry doable simply by pondering. So far, a lot of the firm’s progress on that undertaking seems to be taking the type of college analysis that they’ve funded. With this acquisition, the corporate seems to be working extra carefully with know-how that might sooner or later be productized.
“We know there are more natural, intuitive ways to interact with devices and technology. And we want to build them,” Facebook AR/VR VP Andrew Bosworth wrote in a submit asserting the deal. “It’s why we’ve agreed to acquire CTRL-labs. They will be joining our Facebook Reality Labs team where we hope to build this kind of technology, at scale, and get it into consumer products faster.”
CTRL-labs’ know-how isn’t centered on text-entry as a lot as it’s muscle motion, and hand actions particularly. The startup’s progress was most lately distilled in a developer package that paired a number of sorts of sensors collectively to precisely decide the wearer’s hand place. The wrist-worn gadget provided builders an alternative choice to camera-based or glove-based hand-tracking options. The firm has beforehand talked about AR and VR enter as a transparent use case for the package. Facebook didn’t give particulars on what this acquisition means for builders presently utilizing CTRL-labs’ package.
This acquisition additionally brings to Facebook the armband patents of North (previously Thalmic Labs). CTRL-labs bought the patents associated to the startup’s defunct Myo armband earlier this yr for an undisclosed sum.
CTRL-labs’ acquisition brings extra IP and expertise beneath Facebook’s wings as opponents like Microsoft and Apple proceed to construct out augmented actuality merchandise. There is loads of overlap between lots of the applied sciences that Oculus is constructing for Facebook’s digital actuality merchandise, just like the Quest and Rift S, however CTRL-Labs’ tech may also help the corporate construct enter units which are much less cumbersome, much less conspicuous and extra strong.
“There are some fundamental advantages that we have over really any camera-based technology — including Leap Motion or Kinect — because we’re directly on the body sensing the signal that’s going from the brain to the hand.” CTRL-labs’ head of R&D, Adam Berenzweig, instructed TechCrunch in an interview late final yr. “There are no issues with collusion or field-of-view problems — it doesn’t matter where your hands are, whether they’re in a glove or a spacesuit.”
Facebook is holding its Oculus Connect 6 developer convention later this week, the place the corporate might be delivering updates on its AR/VR efforts.
