Perplexity AI raises $63M, Vision Pro sales slow, Meta slows

Perplexity AI search engine raises $63 million, its valuation reaches more than $2.5 billion. Perplexity is a search engine that uses AI to answer questions directly, rather than providing links. They plan to use the funding to expand globally and offer new plans to enterprise customers that include security features and data tracking. Perplexity's has raised three rounds of funding so far. The most recent was a $74 million Series A round in January, where investors included Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and more.

Meta's stock price plummeted following the earnings release and Mark Zuckerberg's renewed focus on the Metaverse and AI. The company's market value fell by a whopping $200 billion as investors reacted to continued investment in Metaverse, even as Meta's core advertising business continued to face headwinds. But Zuckerberg remains unfazed. Zack believes AI will eventually become a profitable business, but admits it's a marathon, not a sprint. Meta's stock price soared last year after surpassing Metaverse's size in 2022, but it has skyrocketed since the introduction of AI, tripling from its lows. Last week, Meta announced the new Meta AI based on his Llama 3 on all platforms. This week, Meta AI was released to his display-less XR device, the 2nd generation Ray-Ban.

Learn more about Multimodal AI Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. Owners of the new Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses 2.0 can now enable Meta AI on their device. The glasses use voice commands to direct the built-in AI assistant to identify plants, cars, landmarks, and more. The Verge says that AI isn't perfect, but it can be a useful tool. Wearable AI that is context-aware and knows who you are, where you are, and what you are doing (without being told) is the holy grail of technology. Technology wants to be invisible. It is turning us into cyborgs fused with machines. It's scary to say it out loud, but that's what we want too.

Meta opens VR Quest OS, now Horizon OS. Meta's proprietary VR operating system is based on Android. Now that Google is developing an Android-based VR OS, it makes sense for Meta to offer it to everyone. It's hard enough to compete with Apple. Meta also plans to make the App Store compatible with external headsets. Oculus founder Palmer Lackey said. The road to VR, “I've always strongly believed that Oculus should strive to build a technology platform that powers and supports any headset, including competing products like the Vive. This has always been the right strategy. Don't wait until it's too late. I hope.” ASUS, Lenovo, and XBox will be the first to license Meta's Horizon VR OS. Yes, you read that right: Microsoft's XBox VR headset uses Meta's Horizon OS.

Musk said Tesla is a robotics and AI company. Tesla's sales are sluggish, down 19% from the previous year, but new models are being released. Musk said Tesla will thrive as a pioneer in self-driving ride-sharing. He worked twice as hard as he did on self-driving cars and ride-sharing, and four times as hard as he did on robots. “Tesla is not a car company,” he said. Despite a weak outlook for companies, the market rewarded Mr. Musk's big ideas, with stocks up an impressive 14% this week.

Wearable AI speaks at TED. Also. Iyo CEO Ted Rugolo introduced the custom-molded AI earbuds on stage at last week's TED conference. By an unfortunate coincidence, this is how its creator Imran Chaudhry launched Humane Pin last year. At $695 (plus his $25 per month T-mobile subscription), Wearable AI is a device that doesn't meet its purpose and stumbles badly out of the gate. Rugolo said his similarly priced Iyo is a voice-powered wearable computer. Released in time for Christmas.

Trace emerged from stealth with a $2 million pre-seed round. Co-founders Greg Tran, Martin Smith, and Sean Couture worked together on Magic Leap. In the coming months, Trace plans to release a Creator app designed to easily add AR content to the physical world. Trace has been piloting the app with commercial clients such as Deutsche Telekom, which activated it at Mobile World Congress. The round was co-led by Rev1 Ventures and Impellent Ventures.

The Apple Vision Pro is slow, which shouldn't surprise anyone. I told Apple that it was a mistake to promote expensive, content-poor developer kits as the next big advancement in personal computing, but they wouldn't listen. Apple really knows how to do certain things. It's about launching a sophisticated gadget around the world in a lavish, multi-million dollar campaign with huge impact. Everyone in the world needs to hear about it. And they did. It was symbolic. Then all the reporters and analysts around the world faced the facts and said, “Non-developers should not buy this expensive developer kit.” Bloomberg Apple XR analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported this week that Apple will cut its 2024 shipments from 700,000 to 800,000 units to 400,000 to 450,000 units. Everyone made big headlines about this, which honestly surprised me. Ming-Chi Kuo said last year that Apple could only produce 450,000 units due to supply chain problems.

As part of preparations for AWE 15 in Long Beach in June, AWE has invited 100 first-class XR Pioneers to its new Hall of Fame and XR History Museum.. Congratulations to everyone on this carefully selected list. Everyone here is eligible to participate. The next group includes glaring oversights such as Ori Inbar, AWE's all too modest co-founder and managing director, Zuck, HoloLens co-developer and former Microsoft vice president Alex Kipman, and HTC's Cher Wang. I hope it includes many of the other names that belong here. ” by Ernest Cline, author of “Ready Player One.”

“This Week in XR” Podcast Associate Producer Lauren Desher tried everything XR at Coachella. Coachella Quests is a new interactive game for festival attendees that allows players to complete online tasks to earn stamps and experience points (XP) to win prizes such as VIP access to the 'Oasis Lounge.' The Oasis Lounge memorabilia is his NFT that grants players VIP tickets. Coachella partnered with Avalanche to create this blockchain-based loyalty game. “Before coming to the festival, he really enjoyed Web3 gamification, so we were looking forward to it. Quest missions include building squads, scanning QR codes, completing hunts, creating art, and more. It was done using the power of immersive technology,” Descher reports. “Start your quest at http://quests.coachella.com, set up an account there, and connect with the Coachella Discord community to bridge the virtual and digital worlds. I was able to visit some fun places that I wouldn't have been able to explore otherwise.”

Sanguine Onryo: A Haiper AI anime MV experience with samurai beat rhythms powered by Suno AI. tampa artist @Kabooki_Kai Impressive animations like this work are posted on twitter And YouTube “captures the pioneering spirit of HaiperAI, a new generation AI app that redefines the anime experience,” he says. Combining Midjourney AI's evocative art with HaiperAI's innovative animation and his algorithms, this demo showcases a world where stories flow seamlessly, accompanied by SunoAI's hypnotic, dark, samurai-sounding, whimsical beats. To do. ” @Kabooki_Kai said: “AI will revolutionize the VFX industry and commercial content production by significantly reducing production costs and providing opportunities for greater creative freedom. By focusing on learning and integrating these tools, , I can not only prepare for the future, but also help shape it.”

The basis of this column is This week's XR podcast, hosted by author and professor Charlie Fink, Magic Leap founder Ronnie Abovitz, and RED Camera co-founder and futurist Ted Shirowicz. This week's guest is Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, which backs Sandbox and other major Web3 and Metaverse companies. You can find us on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.