After selling AppNexus to AT&T for $1.6B, Brian O'Kelley raises $10M for his new startup, CMDTY, to apply his adtech expertise to supply chain logistics — What does physical commodities trading have in common with programmatic advertising? Quite a lot.
Realme is all set to launch its first 64MP camera smartphone, the Realme XT, in India today. The smartphone was first teased by Realme at the launch of the Realme 5 series. Since then, the smartphone maker has hosted a detailed event in China as well as in India. We also got time to test the smartphone camera; you can check out the results here. The Realme XT launch event will commence at 12:30 PM. The pricing and availability is expected to be announced at the launch event.
The Realme XT launch event will be live-streamed on YouTube. You can watch the event in the video embedded below.
The Realme XT is expected to sport a 6.4-inch full-HD+ Super AMOLED display with a waterdrop notch at the top. The smartphone is tipped to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 712 SoC, paired with up to 8GB RAM and up to 128GB of internal storage. It is said to pack a 4000mAh battery. It might have an in-display fingerprint scanner as well.
The Realme XT is confirmed to feature a 64MP camera made by Samsung. Alongside the primary lens, the smartphone is expected to have an 8MP wide-angle lens, a 2MP macro lens, and a 2MP depth sensor. It may also have a 16MP selfie shooter.
The smartphone is rumoured to come in three storage variants: 4GB RAM + 64GB storage, 6GB RAM + 64GB storage and 8GB RAM + 128GB of internal storage.
The Realme XT is speculated to run ColorOS based on Android 9 Pie. It could launch in two colour variants: Pearl Blue and Pearl White. It is also said to have a USB Type-C port and a 3.5mm audio jack.
Realme will also be launching a 10,000mAh power bank alongside the Realme XT. It is also expected to announce Realme Buds Wireless earphones. The launch news of the two Realme accessories was confirmed by Realme’s official Twitter handle.
The pricing and availability of all the products is expected to be announced at the event today.
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While Apple and Microsoft strain to sell augmented reality as the next major computing platform, many of the startups aiming to beat them to the punch are crashing and burning.
Daqri, which built enterprise-grade AR headsets, has shuttered its HQ, laid off many of its employees and is selling off assets ahead of a shutdown, former employees and sources close to the company tell TechCrunch.
In an email obtained by TechCrunch, the nearly ten-year-old company told its customers that it was pursuing an asset sale and was shutting down its cloud and smart-glasses hardware platforms by the end of September.
“I think the large majority of people who worked [at Daqri] are sad to see it closing down,” a former employee told TechCrunch. “[I] wish the end result was different.”
The company’s 18,000+ square foot Los Angeles headquarters (above) is currently listed as “available” by real estate firm Newmark Knight Frank. The company’s Sunnyvale offices appear to have been shuttered sometime prior to 2019.
Daqri’s shutdown is only the latest among heavily-funded augmented reality startups seeking to court enterprise customers.
Earlier this year, Osterhout Design Group unloaded its AR glasses patents after acquisition talks with Magic Leap, Facebook and others stalled. Meta, an AR headset startup which raised $73 million from VCs including Tencent, also sold its assets earlier this year after the company ran out of cash.
Daqri faced substantial challenges from competing headset-makers including Magic Leap and Microsoft, who were backed by more expansive war chests and institutional partnerships. While the headset company struggled to compete for enterprise customers, Daqri benefitted from investor excitement surrounding the broader space. That is, until the investment climate for AR startups cooled.
Daqri was, at one point, speaking with a large private equity firm about financing ahead of a potential IPO, but as the technical realities facing other AR companies came to light, the firm backed out and the deal crumbled, we are told.
As of mid-2017, a Wall Street Journal report detailed that Daqri had raised $275 million in funding. You won’t find many details on the sources of that funding, other than references to Tarsadia Investments, a private equity firm in Los Angeles that took part in the company’s sole disclosed funding round. We’re told Tarsadia had taken controlling ownership of the firm after subsequent investments.
In early 2016, Daqri acquired Two Trees Photonics, a small UK startup that was building holographic display technologies for automotive customers. The UK division soon comprised a substantial portion of the entire company’s revenues, sources tell us. By early 2018, the division was spun out from Daqri as a separate company called Envisics, leaving the Daqri team to focus wholly on bringing augmented reality to enterprise customers.
The remaining head-worn AR division failed to gain momentum after prolonged setbacks in adoption of its AR smart glasses, including difficulties in training workers to use the futuristic hardware, a source told TechCrunch.
All the while, the company’s leadership put on a brave face as the startup sputtered. In an interview this year with Cornell Enterprise Magazine, Daqri CEO Roy Ashok told the publication that the startup was forecasting shipments of “tens of thousands” of pairs of its AR glasses in 2020.
Daqri, its founder and several executives did not respond to requests for comment.
Sidewalk Labs spinout Replica raises $11M Series A for its modeling tool that uses mobile location data to show public agencies how, when, and why people travel — Replica, the data-gathering tool created within Sidewalk Labs that maps the movement of people in cities, is now a company.
Meir Orbach / CTech : Docs: Israeli AI chip startup Hailo is pursuing an urgent IPO via a SPAC merger at a valuation of less than $500M; ...
