This Week In XR: RealWear’s $396 Million SPAC, New Financing For Light Field Lab, Mawari, Engage XR, And Looking Glass

Forbes Innovation Consumer Tech This Week In XR: RealWear’s $396 Million SPAC, New Financing For Light Field Lab, Mawari, Engage XR, And Looking Glass Charlie Fink Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. A former tech executive covering XR and The Metaverse for Forbes. Following Feb 9, 2023, 04:03pm EST | Press play to listen to this article! Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin This Week XR Is Partying Like It’s 2021.

RealWear’s SPAC merger leads the bunch in sheer size. Light Field Lab scored another $50M, Mawari $6. 5M, Accenture invested in 3D display maker Looking Glass, and Engage XR is raising $11.

7M in new financing. Over 70,000 of Realwear’s Assisted Reality headsets are in the field. Realwear RealWear to go public via SPAC that values the new co at $375.

5 M RealWear, which makes a ruggedized head-mounted assisted reality device for industrial users, is merging with Cascadia Acquisition Corp (NSDQ: CCAI) , which is nothing more than $187. 5M is cash and a public listing looking for a tech deal like this. Over 70,000 RealWear devices are fielded by 5,000 enterprise customers around the world, including Siemens, Johnson & Johnson, and Ford.

The company reported $20. 5 million in 2022 revenue with a gross margin of 63%. The deal, which would value the combined company at $375.

5M, is expected to close in the latter half of the year. The Creator of Light. Light Field Labs Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! He’s avateering the Creator of Light with face .

. . [+] tracking and a game engine running real time graphics.

Light Field Lab Here Come The Holograms: Light Field Labs Raises $50M for Commercial Launch. Their SolidLight holograms will launch for applications within the global video wall market, which encompasses multiple verticals like corporate spaces, entertainment venues, and public displays. Light Field Lab has raised a total of $85M, and is backed by Bill Gates (Gates Frontier), Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures), the VC arms of Bosch, Forvia, LG, Liberty Global, NTT Docomo, Samsung, and Verizon, and a prestigious list of venture capital firms, national technology funds, and strategic corporate partners including AVG, ACME Capital, Comcast, Corning, NCSOFT, OTOY, R7 Partners, and Taiwania Capital.

MORE FOR YOU The ‘Backsies’ Billionaire: Texan Builds Second Fortune From Wreckage Of Real Estate Empire He’d Sold Pence Subpoenaed In Trump Special Counsel Probe How To Save $184,000 When You Fly By Private Jet Mawari Network representation over Shibuya, Tokyo Mawari Mawari Raises $6. 5 M To Enable AR Cloud. There has always been a last mile solution for the kind of dual-compute solution XR needs to work without latency on 5G.

Mawari is partnering with Telcos to create GPU nodes to accelerate content at light speed. If we’re to end the tyranny of the app, and integrate the digital twin with the physical, a solution like Mawari is required. Accenture Invests In Looking Glass 3D Display.

The popular new lenticular display enables 3D content to be inspected in real time without the use of classes. Imn June, 2022, the company introduced 32” and 65” models. Accenture said it uses Looking Glass Displays in its design labs, and characterized this as a strategic investment.

The size of the investment was not disclosed. The author with students in ENGAGE. Charlie Fink Engage XR Raising up to $11.

7M via Share Placing, Subscription The company, a micro microcap valuated at just $13. 02 M on the Irish Exchange, continues to be the biggest screaming buy in XR. The company has a substantial metaverse for industry and education.

PWC and other companies have Metaverse campuses there. Engage also provides the platform for Victory XR, which is building Metaversities for dozens of institutions, including Stanford. Coming soon to Sandbox’s location-based simulation centers.

SandboxVR ‘Squid Game’ Multiplayer VR Experience Coming to Sandbox Locations This Year . We’ve been tracking this chain of Location Based Virtual Reality simulation centers since the pandemic forced their closure. With the easing of restrictions, they are back with the funds to grow, and a plan to reintroduce its business with this high profile Netflix franchise.

A Live Metaverse Experience in Golf+ The Beat The Pro Experience from Golf+ starts Thurs 2/9 and ends Sunday the 12th. You see the video of the shot that just happened at the Phoenix Open. In VR you will also see the shot tracer from the tee to the player’s end position, as well as their putts in the real world AND the virtual world, aka The Metaverse, so you are able to compete against them in (almost) real time.

Golf claps. This Week In AI: Director Makes Dramatic Video With AI In Two Hours . This topic used to fit neatly into this newsletter, but seems now to demand its own.

Do I have time to run on two tracks? Will there be enough AI news to sustain a separate column? We’re going to find out soon. This Week in XR is also a podcast hosted by the author of this column, Ted Schilowitz, Futurist, Paramount Global, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Jon Karafin, CEO of Light Field Labs, which just raised $50 M.

We can be found on Spotify , iTunes , and YouTube . What We’re Reading I wore Ray-Ban Stories with built-in cameras on vacation — here’s what surprised me (Kate Kozuch/Tom’ Guide) Inside Meow Wolf’s Living, Breathing Metaverse (Scott Stein/Cnet) Quick testing sessions of Nreal Air, LAWK, iQiYi Mix, and more! (Tony Vitillo/Skarred Ghost) This Week in Schadenfreude Meta’s VR hellscape might soon be invaded by children Report: Meta to Open ‘Horizon Worlds’ to Younger Teens Amid Renewed Retention Push This is the most depressing story of the week. Meta already has a problem with kids in Horizon Worlds.

Here’s why Meta is shutting down Echo VR (Jay Peters/The Verge Here’s why virtual reality won’t be tech’s ‘next big thing’ (Navneet Alang/Toronto Star) Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out my website or some of my other work here . Charlie Fink Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.