A Dutch business that specialises in smart eyewear, Luxexcel, has been purchased by Meta, the parent company of Facebook. De Tijd first the news of the transaction, and TechCrunch subsequently verified it. A Meta spokeswoman told the newspaper, “We’re thrilled that the Luxexcel team has joined Meta, expanding the existing cooperation between the two firms. The deal’s financial details were kept private by the corporation.
Luxexcel started out in business as a maker of prescription lenses in 2009. The business has gained notoriety lately in the field of augmented reality. For instance, it collaborated with WaveOptics in the beginning of 2021, which Snap later that year acquired for $500 million. As TechCrunch notes, there are claims that Luxexcel and Meta previously collaborated on the business’s Project Aria AR spectacles.
The deal occurs while the Federal Trade Commission is investigating Meta’s purchase of Supernatural developer Within. To prevent the transaction, the agency sued Meta in July. The massive social media company is also criticised for how much money it spends on its plans for the metaverse. Before the business let go of 11,000 people, Meta informed investors in October that Reality Labs, its division for virtual and augmented reality, would lose more than $9 billion in 2022. It continued by stating that operational losses for the division will probably “increase considerably year over year” in 2023.
