If virtual reality social gatherings aren’t your cup of tea, we don’t blame you. But it’s hard to deny that putting on an immersive headset and punching stuff sounds kind of fun. Since its founding in 2017, Liteboxer has been like Peloton for boxing — you use in-home hardware to get a unique, music-based workout…
Pico, the Chinese virtual reality startup bought by TikTok parent ByteDance back in August, has struck a major partnership with Qualcomm to push further into the extended reality (XR) space. Pico’s XR products will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces, the chipmaking giant’s developer program designed to make apps more ready for extended reality. Rather…
Writing about Europe is hard today. Russia is invading Ukraine as we write, and global markets are in freefall. This is the continent’s political and military backdrop. Last week, this column took a look at the European technology market’s deep tech expertise. Europe’s economic future, in other words. We could have held off a day…
Why stop at just gamifying fitness with a leaderboard? Peloton is literally adding games to its repertoire today as it launches Lanebreak, which the company calls its “first gaming-inspired experience.” Lanebreak falls into the genre of music-centric rhythm games, like virtual reality favorite “Beatsaber” or the classic “Guitar Hero.” But on a game like “Guitar…
As countries ease up on COVID restrictions, activities are going back in person. But the virtual event space continues to attract investors, at least in Asia. Hong Kong-based events management platform EventX said today it has raised another $8 million for its Series B, lifting the total amount secured for this round to $18 million….
A top VR web browser is closing down. Today, Mozilla announced it’s shutting down its Firefox Reality browser — the four-year-old browser built for use in virtual reality environments. The technology had allowed users to access the web from within their VR headset, doing things like visiting URLs, performing searches, and browsing both the 2D…
Meta is bringing its 3D avatars to Instagram and is also rolling out updated avatars to Facebook and Messenger, the company announced on Monday. Users in the United States, Canada and Mexico can now show up as their virtual selves in stickers, feed posts, Facebook profile pictures and more. Today’s update adds Cochlear implants and…
Refract, a Singapore-based extended reality (XR) startup, announced today it has closed approximately $8.5million SGD (approximately $6million) Series A led by Sea Limited along with international family offices and individual investors. The latest funding will be used to intensify R&D for AXIS, a wearable and game-oriented full-body motion capture solution. The startup also plans to…
Mustafa Suleyman has been working in artificial intelligence for 12 years, trying to figure out how to use machine learning systems and AI to do important things in the work and have impact at scale. “And over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to be at the forefront of a lot of cutting-edge applications of…
Following news that the FTC’s antitrust suit against Meta cleared a critical hurdle earlier this week, the agency is apparently also taking a sharp interest in the company’s VR business. Bloomberg reports that the FTC and multiple state attorneys general are probing Meta’s virtual reality division for “potential anti-competitive practices.” New York reportedly leads the…