Hardware is hard: Google buys AR glasses maker that was reportedly running low on cash - Silicon Valley Business Journal (2024)

Google Inc. confirmed Tuesday that it has purchased North, a Canada-based augmented reality glasses maker.

The news: Google hardware executive Rick Osterloh confirmed the purchase in a blog post Tuesday. The company didn't disclose the price, although the Globe and Mail, which first reported on the deal last week, spoke with sources who pegged the price at around $180 million. North had raised just under $200 million from investors, according to Crunchbase, meaning the reported sale price would barely break even.

Why this matters: While Mountain View-based Google hasn't detailed how it wants to use North's technology, the deal shows it continues to be interested in AR wearables. North's business and team will be folded into Google's offices in Ontario, Canada, where the company is based.

"From 10 blue links on a PC, to Maps on your mobile phone, to Google Nest Hub sharing a recipe in the kitchen, Google has always strived to be helpful to people in their daily lives," Osterloh wrote in a blog post. "We’re building towards a future where helpfulness is all around you, where all your devices just work together and technology fades into the background. We call this ambient computing. North’s technical expertise will help as we continue to invest in our hardware efforts and ambient computing future."

North had received backing from investors including Amazon.com Inc. and Intel Corp. The company, previously known as Thalmic Labs until it rebranded in 2018, said it will not ship the second-generation version of its glasses, called Focals 2.0, and will issue refunds to customers who had purchased those devices.

The background: The deal comes about three years after Google dropped the consumer version of Google Glass, its own AR glasses product. The Alphabet Inc.-owned company had launched Google Glass in 2012, to much fanfare as well as criticism of the product's high price and its privacy implications. Google still makes an enterprise version of Glass that it has marketed as a hands-free device for workers in industries including manufacturing, healthcare and logistics.

Further reading: Bloomberg reported back in March that North had been meeting with potential buyers since last summer as it was running low on cash in the cash-intensive hardware business.