AR/VR News Roundup

AR glasses maker Osterhout Design Group (ODG) has raised $58M at valuation of $258M in series A financing round. Shenzhen O-film Tech Co., Vanfund Urban Investment & Development Co. and several individual investors participated in the round alongside principal outside investor and strategic partner 21st Century Fox.

“For eight years, we’ve taken a very systematic approach to designing and refining our smartglasses for specific applications from the US government, industry and enterprise customers in a wide variety of markets, and that will not change,” said Ralph Osterhout, CEO of ODG. “We carefully picked investment partners who not only share ODG’s product vision and growth strategy, but also have the reputation and reach to expand ODG’s global presence and market recognition."

The company already shows it R-9 consumer AR glasses, to be officially announced at CES in a week:

James Mackie posted a video review of the R-9 prototype:



Apparently, Facebook's Oculus and Google are looking to add eye tracking technology to their VR products. Techcrunch and Forbes report that Oculus has acquired The Eye Tribe, a Stockholm, Sweden-based company. Eye Tribe was founded in 2011 to develop affordable, consumer-oriented eye-tracking technology:



Techcrunch, Bloomberg: In October 2016, Google acquired Eyefluence, an eye-tracking startup founded in 2013: