Meta was a company that designed

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory Modality (human–computer interaction), modalities, including visual, Hearing, auditory, hap ...

products. The company was founded by

Meron Gribetz Meron Gribetz is an Israeli technology entrepreneur. He was the founder and CEO of Meta, a Silicon Valley technology company that produced augmented reality products (the company shut down in 2019). He is currently the CEO and founder of Inner Co ...

in 2012, based on the "Extramissive spatial imaging digital eye glass" technology invented by Gribetz and Mann originally filed with the US Patent and Trademark office Jan 3, 2013. The company furloughed two-thirds of its approximately 100 employees in September 2018. In 2019, the company declared itself insolvent after its primary lender

foreclosed Foreclosure is a legal process in which a lender attempts to recover the balance of a loan from a borrower who has stopped making payments to the lender by forcing the sale of the asset used as the collateral for the loan. Formally, a mortg ...

and sold all of the company's assets.Strange, Adario (January 11, 2019
AR Startup Meta Company Shuts Down Amid Asset Foreclosure Sale, Patent Fight, & Executive Departures
Next Reality News. (Retrieved January 12, 2019.)

Products

The company's products included the Meta 1 and Meta 2 Developer Kits, headsets by which users could view and manipulate

holographic Holography is a technique that enables a wavefront to be recorded and later re-constructed. Holography is best known as a method of generating real three-dimensional images, but it also has a wide range of other applications. In principle, it ...

images.

History

Meta was founded by Meron Gribetz while he was a student at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

. In 2013, Meta launched a crowd-funded

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...

campaign that raised $194,444. Also in 2013, Meta was accepted into the

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...

's seed accelerator program. Steve Mann became the company's chief scientist and Steven Feiner became an adviser. In 2014, founder Gribetz was awarded the "30 Under 30 award" in the technology category by ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'' and Meta won best heads-up display award for the Meta Pro at the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event ty ...

. Meta presented the Meta 1 Developer Kit with a live medical demo at 2014's TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. In September 2014, Meta began to ship its Meta 1 Developer Kit. In 2015, Meta received $23 million in Series-A funding from

Horizons Ventures Sir Ka-shing Li (; born 13 June 1928) is a Hong Kong billionaire business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. As of June 2019, Li is the 31st richest person in the world, with an estimated net wealth of US$33.4 billion. He is the senior ad ...

Tim Draper Timothy Cook Draper (born June 11, 1958) is an American venture capital investor, and founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ),

, BOE Optoelectronics,

Garry Tan Garry Tan (; born 1981) is the founder of Initialized Capital. He previously co-founded Posterous and Posthaven. He was also an early employee at Palantir Technologies, and a partner at Y Combinator. Early life and education Tan was born in 19 ...

and

Alexis Ohanian Alexis Kerry Ohanian ( hy, Ալեքսիս Քերի Օհանյան; born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the co-founder and executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with St ...

of Y Combinator, Danhua Capital, Commodore Partners, and Vegas Tech Fund. In 2016, Meta unveiled its second-generation product at a

TED conference TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...

. The company received another $50M in venture-capital funds from

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo ( , ), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, business solutions, and related se ...

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the wo ...

, Banyan Capital, Comcast Ventures, and GQY. In March 2016, it announced the launch of the Meta 2 at the $949 to compete with the

Microsoft HoloLens Microsoft HoloLens is an augmented reality (AR)/ mixed reality (MR) headset developed and manufactured by Microsoft. HoloLens runs the Windows Mixed Reality platform under the Windows 10 operating system. Some of the positional tracking tech ...

, which retailed for $3000. However, the Meta 2 would be a tethered and would require an external PC whereas the Hololens was a standalone product. In 2018, Meta furloughed two-thirds of its one hundred employees after it failed to secure another round of venture capital funding. In January 2019, Meta declared itself

insolvent In accounting, insolvency is the state of being unable to pay the debts, by a person or company (debtor), at maturity; those in a state of insolvency are said to be ''insolvent''. There are two forms: cash-flow insolvency and balance-sheet i ...

after its primary lender

and sold all the company's assets. In May 2019, a company called Meta View announced it had acquired the intellectual property assets of Meta, with Jay Wright, who was previously president and general manager of Qualcomm's augmented reality division, Vuforia, chosen as CEO. In July 2021, the company announced a new name, Campfire, and its plans to release a 3D collaboration system for design and engineering later that year.

References

External links

{{authority control Augmented reality Companies based in San Mateo County, California Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Technology companies established in 2013 2013 establishments in California Technology companies disestablished in 2019 2019 disestablishments in California

Products

History

See also

References

External links