New year, new plans for the future. It has been made official in these hours that Meta formalized the acquisition of the Dutch startup Luxexcel, which deals with the development of smart glasses. The news, which has already been in the air for a few years and whose officiality was already rumored at the end of 2022, was confirmed by TechCrunch in these hours.
A spokesperson for Meta said: “We are thrilled that the Luxexcel team has joined us, solidifying an already existing partnership between the two companies.” The economic terms of the agreement have not been disclosed at the moment.
What is Luxexcel and what use could Meta make of it
Luxexcel is a company founded in 2009, initially born as a startup able to create prescription lenses through 3D printing. With the exploits of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), the company began to specialize in smart glasses. In 2021 Luxexcel signed a partnership with WaveOptics with the aim of co-producing Snap smart glasses (yes, the company that runs Snapchat).
As suggested by Meta’s spokesperson in his statement, the two companies had been collaborating for some time, well before the acquisition formalized today. In particular Luxexcel would have worked on the design of Project Aria ArAR smart glasses that should arrive during this 2023.
Meta’s efforts for augmented reality, especially in recent years, have been many, although not all have given the desired results. Just think of the flop of Reality Labs, which it generated a hole worth more than 9 billion dollars which led Meta to lay off more than 11,000 employees.
Finally, it is not yet clear what the position of US regulators will be, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over all.