Greycroft, the now 17-year-old, New York and Los Angeles-based venture firm, has grown up in more ways than one. What began with three founders has evolved into a 60-person team. What began as a $30 million fund has grown into an enterprise that is today managing more than $3 billion in assets, including two funds totaling roughly $1 billion that were announced in late April.

Like every firm, Greycroft, which targets investments from $250,000 up to $50 million, has had its ups and down with its portfolio companies. Mobile games maker Scopely said in April that it’s selling to Savvy Games Group, owned wholly by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, for $4.9 billion. (Greycroft invested roughly $100 million into the company and owned more than 5% of the business.) Greycroft also backed the dating app Bumble — which staged a successful IPO in 2021 — and invested in Shipt, which sold to Target for $550 million in cash in 2017. Other bets have proved more problematic, including The RealReal, which staged a traditional IPO in 2019 and has since seen its market cap crater; and Bird, the scooter company that went public via a special purpose vehicle in late 2021 and is now on the verge of getting delisted from the NYSE.

To learn more about the ride, we had a wide-ranging chat late week with firm co-founder Ian Sigalow, who, for what it’s worth, doesn’t have a stance on Saudi Arabia-backed U.S. venture funds (though Greycroft is not among them), says Greycroft is in rarified company when it comes to its ability to write big checks, and observes that anyone can play venture capitalist right now, given some of the prices in the public market — not that Greycroft is shopping there, he added.

You can hear that conversation here; in the meantime, highlights from that chat follow, edited lightly for length.

TC: You’ve raised basically two thirds of your assets under management in the last few years. In retrospect, do you think that you invested that too quickly?

IS: If I could take a ‘do over’ of 2020 and 2021, we would probably look back and say [that] half of the capital deployed during that period, we would have been better off waiting. On the flip side is that the other half of the capital employed during that period, I think we will make a really strong venture return on. Time will tell [but] we built very meaningful ownership positions in a couple hundred companies going into kind of the late phase of this asset bubble and [something like] $4 billion or $5 billion of follow-on capital went into Greycroft companies in 2020, and that number grew in 2021. It was like $6 billion to $7 billion — enormous numbers.

When we started Greycroft in 2006, the entire U.S. venture capital industry was $30 billion. Our own portfolio [companies] were commanding so much capital, and you look at it and you kind of have to make a determination, [asking about] every single company, Where am I going to protect my ownership and and where am I not? The challenge in that market dynamic is that if you don’t raise the money and your competitors do, you’re really at a strategic disadvantage. So our companies had to go get capital. And for our part, because we were the largest shareholder in many of these companies, we had to invest something. And I think we deployed $250 million to $300 million in 2020 and 2021, which is a small sum relative to the $10 billion our companies raised during that period, but was still a large sum for us. And I’m very happy sitting here in 2023 that our businesses have the balance sheet they have . . .but the downside of it is that not every dollar deployed during that window is going to generate a 10x or greater return.

Big asset managers say growth at a discount is where venture is heading. Are you looking for a bigger ownership percentage in deals than in recent years?

Venture at the moment is a tale of two cities. The capital is flowing into the highest growth, best-quality companies that I’ve seen, and we’re still meeting with businesses that are going zero to $100 million of revenue in a couple of years. And those businesses can command steep valuations and a lot of mindshare and a lot of funding. It’s almost as if the party didn’t stop for those companies in 2022. Then you’ve got a second set of businesses that are growing slower, are not likely to be marquee assets for a handful of reasons, or just have something to prove before they can break out. And I think the challenge today is sorting through that list and understanding what has to change – what market unlock has to happen —  for that second set of companies to explode with growth. If you do, you’ll see the valuation and the multiple improves; if you don’t, there just isn’t capital for them.

There’s obviously a lot of great value to be had regarding publicly traded companies whose shares are down and are highly liquid. Is [shopping for these] something that Greycroft is doing in this market?

We have the ability to invest in public equities. We’ve spent time looking at quite a few names that have sold off in the public market. We have yet to make either a PIPE or standard open market purchase of of a public equity yet. Of course, we own public securities because we’ve taken companies public; we continue to manage those. But I actually think it’s an interesting area to look, and it’s an area that’s open to everybody. I mean, you can go be a venture capitalist today in the public market. If you can find an undervalued business that’s got good growth prospects —  because the companies with a market cap below $1 billion or $2 billion don’t trade very well, there’s not a lot of institutional coverage, their market cap is generally speaking too small for the Fidelitys of the world to take an interest in — if you get into one of those businesses early, you can you can make 10 times your money. In fact, I think 10 years from now, people will look back and say, ‘Wow, there was a 50x investment to be made, if somebody looked at  these couple of names in the public market.’

Again, you can hear the full interview here, where we also talk with Sigalow about the circular economy, flexible living, and how Greycroft is thinking about AI — and where it’s placing its related bets.

Greycroft co-founder Ian Sigalow on investing $1B in this market by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch

While cloud computing has transformed just about every industry on Earth, a burgeoning backlash has led some businesses to seek alternatives to the Big Tech-dominated public cloud. Vendor lock-in, spiralling costs, security concerns, and a lack of control over how their data is processed are just some of the reasons companies might retreat from cloud-first strategies.

For European companies specifically, a growing digital sovereignty agenda has led the likes of AWS, Microsoft, and Google to focus their efforts on bringing granular data controls and storage closer to their customers, while consumer juggernauts such as TikTok have had to invest significant resources in localizing their infrastructure.

But for many, such measures don’t go far enough — a data center might well be located in Europe, but it’s still controlled by a company headquartered thousands of miles away. And that is why a new Nordic startup is launching out of stealth today with €15 million ($16 million) in funding as it looks to build fully localized, hyperscale data centers across Europe.

Founded in 2022 by serial entrepreneur Mattias Åström, Evroc is aiming to establish an inaugural pilot data center in the Stockholm region next year, with plans for eight data centers — and three software development hubs — by 2028. The ultimate mission, according to the company, is to create Europe’s “first secure, sovereign, and sustainable hyperscale cloud,” and end the “foreign dominance of the European cloud market.”

The company’s €15 million cash injection, with backers including EQT Ventures and Norrsken VC, will go some way toward helping Evroc achieve its lofty mission — but building data centers from scratch is a fairly capital intensive endeavor. This is why Åström says Evroc is planning to raise an additional €3 billion in equity, debt and “various sources of public funding” to get its first two data centers off the ground. “The first one will be established in 2025,” Åström told TechCrunch.

In terms of locations, details are not yet set in stone, but the first two will be split across Northern and Southern Europe, with the next six likely to be anywhere in the European Union.

“The location will be determined though a site-selection process that we will initiate in the coming year,” Åström explained. “The decision will be based on a number of factors including access to renewable energy, engineering talent, capital and support from public authorities. We have not excluded the U.K., but initially we are looking at the EU as our primary market.”

Of course, data centers also require a significant amount of power, something that Åström says they plan to address with “next-generation energy-efficient technologies,” namely something known in industry parlance as “eco load balancing” which it will offer to customers on an opt-in basis.

“Data and workloads will flow seamlessly between Evroc’s data centers to where renewable energy is most readily available and affordable,” Åström continued. “This, in combination with other investments in energy efficiency, will allow us to build the world’s cleanest cloud from day one.”

Scrutiny

The timing of Evroc’s launch is notable, coming amid heightened scrutiny of the European cloud market. In mainland Europe, Microsoft has faced criticism from rivals (including AWS and smaller European competitors) for using its dominance in business software to tether customers to its Azure cloud platform, though settlement discussions are currently underway to avert formal antitrust procedures. And the U.K. is currently mulling anti-competition manoeuvres over how AWS and Microsoft make it difficult for companies to switch cloud providers.

All this serves to highlight the growing tensions between Europe and U.S. Big Tech. And, coupled with the “digital sovereignty” push underway in Europe, this could position a young cloud upstart favorably. On top of that, Evroc is pitching its local development and R&D efforts as a major differentiator to its deep-pocketed rivals, arguing that this will help create significant jobs across the continent.

“If you look at the major cloud companies today active in Europe, their data centers themselves do not create many jobs, but their development and R&D do — in other parts of the world,” Åström said. “We think this is a core skill for Europe to have in Europe, and we want to enable a European ecosystem for cloud development.”

Indeed, physical data centers are only one facet of Evroc’s plans — the company’s product development and R&D hubs will serve as the foundation to its network of servers, and is where it hopes to hire some 3,000 people in the coming years.

“This is where the majority of our employees will sit, and it is something that Europe has been missing out on to a large extent, given that most of the development connected to cloud takes place in other parts of the world,” Åström added.

This all sounds great in principle, but there’s no escaping the herculean undertaking involved in building a cloud infrastructure business from scratch, and taking on the trillion-dollar behemoths from the other side of the Atlantic. But Åström is convinced the opportunity, will and regulatory support exists to do just that.

“Given the uncertainty surrounding U.S. authorities having access to European data, there are a lot of European companies, such as banks, hospitals and tax authorities, that cannot put their data in the cloud,” he said. “Instead, their only option is to put their data in their own, very inefficient and unsustainable, on-premise server halls. We want to provide them with an alternative to that. We also think we have an advantage in starting without any legacy compared to the established cloud companies.”

It’s worth noting that there are already some home-grown cloud computing options already, including France’s OVHcloud, but Åström is quick to stress that his company is tackling the problem completely afresh — with “hyperscale” at the root of its business. This basically means at least 100,000 servers in a single data center, and a combination of hardware and software to store and manage data at scale.

“The traditional European providers come from a different type of legacy and business strategy, offering web hosting, domains, bare metal, etc, and have not really had the same scale as the global cloud providers,” Åström said. “We want to build Europe’s first truly hyperscale cloud.”

How Evroc plans to build sovereign, hyperscale data centers in Europe by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

French startup Escape has raised a $3.9 million (€3.6 million) funding round shortly after ending Y Combinator’s winter 2023 cohort. The company provides a cybersecurity product focused on securing APIs before they are rolled out publicly.

French VC firm Iris is leading the round with Frst also participating. Existing investors Irregular Expressions, Tiny Supercomputers and Kima Ventures are participating in the round. Some of the company’s angel investors include Philippe Langlois, Mehdi Medjaoui and Roxanne Varza.

“We decided to create a custom algorithm powered by artificial intelligence that can simulate cyber attacks. Once it has found security flaws, it will give you remediations,” co-founder and CEO Tristan Kalos told me. He founded the startup with Antoine Carossio and there are now 10 people working for Escape.

In more technical terms, Escape is an agentless solution as it integrates directly in your development pipeline. Every time the dev team commits some new lines of code in the code repository, it will trigger Escape using an integration in the continuous integration/continuous delivery flow (CI/CD).

For instance, Escape can identify an issue with rate limiting. That means that a bad actor could leverage this flaw to extract large volumes of data. Escape can also see if invalid actions are properly blocked to prevent data manipulation. It integrates with Snyk so that Escape issues appear in your Snyk’s code issues.

“These are dynamic tests. We don’t test the source code itself, but rather the application as it runs. What’s complicated with an API is the business logic — how to interact and how to attack the API. We use reinforcement learning, a mix of deep learning and heuristics,” Kalos said.

Escape first decided to focus on GraphQL APIs as the startup identified that it would be the best go-to-market strategy. But the company is currently rolling out support for REST APIs, which are more widespread than GraphQL-based APIs.

The company has already convinced around 20 clients, such as Sorare, Shine and Neo4J. As you can see, Escape wants to focus on bigger clients working in sensitive industries, including banks and financial services companies. Each contract could potentially be worth tens of thousands of euros per year.

Before using Escape, making sure that your company’s APIs are secured was mostly a manual process. Every now and then, big companies work with security analysts to conduct a penetration test (or pentest, for short).

“Once or twice a year, they come in, look at everything that’s going on and hand you a security report. Companies review the findings internally and list the issues: we’ve got to resolve this, we’ve got to resolve that,” Kalos told me.

But then, companies have to find the developers who are in charge of this specific part of the product or that API in particular. In other words, it’s a reactive and imperfect process.

Escape doesn’t want to replace pentests altogether. Pentests don’t just focus on APIs either, they are much larger than that. Escape just wants to surface security flaws at the API level so that they are fixed when they first appear. This way, most issues are already fixed when a security firm conducts a pentest. It’s a more proactive and dynamic security model, and that could be a nice selling point.

Escape dynamically scans APIs to find security flaws by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch

Indian edtech giant Byju’s has filed a complaint in the New York Supreme Court to challenge the acceleration of the $1.2 billion term loan B and to disqualify Redwood, who it alleges has conducted a series of predatory tactics.

The Bengaluru-headquartered startup said Redwood purchased a significant portfolio of the loan while primarily trading in distressed debt.

India’s most valuable startup said it will not make any payments to the term loan B lenders until the dispute is resolved.

Byju’s files suit challenging acceleration of $1.2B loan, seeks to disqualify Redwood for ‘predatory’ tactics by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

After a roughly 30 minute demo that ran through the major features that are yet ready to test I came away convinced that Apple has delivered nothing less than a genuine leapfrog in capability and execution of XR — or mixed reality with its new Apple Vision Pro. 

To be super clear, I’m not saying it delivers on all promises, is a genuinely new paradigm in computing or any other high powered claim that Apple hopes to deliver on once it ships. I will need a lot more time with the device than a guided demo. 

But, I’ve used essentially every major VR headset and AR device since 2013’s Oculus DK1 right up through the latest generations of Quest and Vive headsets. I’ve tried all of the experiences and stabs at making fetch happen when it comes to XR. I’ve been awed and re-awed as developers of the hardware and software of those devices and their marquee apps have continued to chew away at the “conundrum of the killer app” — trying to find something that would get real purchase with the broader public. 

There are some genuine social, narrative or gaming successes like Gorilla Tag, VRChat or Cosmonius. I’ve also been moved by first person experiences by Sundance filmmakers highlighting the human (or animal) condition. 

But none of them had the advantages that Apple brings to the table with Apple Vision Pro. Namely, 5,000 patents filed over the past few years and an enormous base of talent and capital to work with. Every bit of this thing shows Apple-level ambition. I don’t know whether it will be the ‘next computing mode’, but you can see the conviction behind each of the choices made here. No corners cut. Full tilt engineering on display.

The hardware is good, very good, with 24 million pixels across the two panels, orders of magnitude more than any headsets most consumers have come in contact with. The optics are better, the headband is comfortable and quickly adjustable and there is a top strap for weight relief. Apple says it is still working on which light seal (the cloth shroud) options to ship with it when it releases officially but the default one was comfortable for me. They aim to ship them with varying sizes and shapes to fit different faces. The power connector has a great little design as well that interconnects using internal pin-type power linkages with an external twist lock. 

There is also a magnetic solution for some (but not all) optical adjustments people with differences in vision may need. The onboarding experience features an automatic eye-relief calibration matching the lenses to the center of your eyes. No manual wheels adjusting that here.

The main frame and glass piece look fine, though it’s worth mentioning that they are very substantial in size. Not heavy, per-se, but definitely present. 

If you have experience with VR at all then you know that the two big barriers most people hit are either latency driven nausea or the isolation that long sessions wearing something over your eyes can deliver. 

Apple has mitigated both of those head on. The R1 chip that sits alongside the M1 chip has a system-wide polling rate of 12ms, and I noticed no judder or framedrops. There was a slight motion blur effect used in the passthrough mode but it wasn’t distracting. The windows themselves rendered crisply and moved around snappily. 

Of course, Apple was able to mitigate those issues due to a lot of completely new and original hardware. Everywhere you look here there’s a new idea, a new technology or a new implementation. All of that new comes at a price, $3,500 is on the high end of expectations and firmly places the device in the power user category for early adopters.

Here’s what Apple got right that other headsets just couldn’t nail down:

The eye tracking and gesture control is near perfect. The hand gestures are picked up anywhere around the headset, that includes on your lap or low and away resting on a chair or couch. Many other hand tracking interfaces force you to keep your hands up in front of you, which is tiring. Apple has high resolution cameras dedicated to the bottom of the device just to keep track of your hands. Similarly, an eye tracking array inside means that, after calibration, nearly everything you look at is precisely highlighted. A simple low-effort tap of your fingers and boom, it works. 

Passthrough is a major key. Having a real-time 4k view of the world around you that includes any humans in your personal space is so important for long-session VR or AR wear. There is a deep animal brain thing in most humans that makes us really, really uncomfortable if we can’t see our surroundings for a length of time. Eliminating that worry by passing through an image should improve the chance of long use times. There’s also a clever ‘breakthrough’ mechanism that automatically passes a person who comes near you through your content, alerting you to the fact that they’re approaching. The eyes on the outside, which change appearance depending on what you’re doing, also provide a nice context cue for those outside. 

The resolution means that text is actually readable. Apple’s positioning of this as a full on computing device only makes sense if you can actually read text in it. All of the previous iterations of ‘virtual desktop’ setups have relied on panels and lenses that present too blurry a view to reliably read fine text at length. In many cases it literally hurt to do so. Not with the Apple Vision Pro – text is super crisp and legible at all sizes and at far ‘distances’ within your space. 

There were a handful of really surprising moments from my short time with the headset as well. Aside from the sharpness of the display and the snappy responsiveness of the interface, the entire suite of samples oozed attention to detail. 

The Personas Play. I was HIGHLY doubtful that Apple could pull off a workable digital avatar based off of just a scan of your face using the Vision Pro headset itself. Doubt crushed. I’d say that if you’re measuring the digital version of you that it creates to be your avatar in facetime calls and other areas it has a solid set of toes on the other side of the uncanny valley. It’s not totally perfect, but they got skin tension and muscle work right, the expressions they have you make are used to interpolate out a full range of facial contortions using machine learning models and the brief interactions I had with a live person on a call (and it was live, I checked by asking ‘off script’ stuff) did not feel creepy or odd, it worked. 

It’s crisp. I’m sort of stating this again but, really, it’s crisp as hell. Running right up to demos like the 3D dinosaur you got right down to the texture level and beyond. 

3D Movies are actually good in it. Jim Cameron probably had a moment when he saw Avatar: Way of Water on the Apple Vision Pro. This thing was absolutely born to make the 3D format sing — and it can display them pretty much right away so there’s going to be a decent library of shot on 3D movies that will bring new life to them all. The 3D photos and videos you can take with Apple Vision Pro directly also look super great, but I wasn’t able to test capturing any myself so I don’t know how that will feel yet, awkward? Hard to say. 

The setup is smooth and simple. A couple of minutes and you’re good to go, very Apple.

Yes, it does look that good. The output of the interface and the various apps are so good that Apple just used them directly off of the device in its keynote. The interface is bright and bold and feels present because of the way it interacts with other windows, casts shadows on the ground and reacts to lighting conditions.

Overall, I’m hesitant to make any broad claims about whether Apple Vision Pro is going to fulfill Apple’s claims about the onset of spatial computing. I’ve had far too little time with it and it’s not even completed — Apple is still working on things like the light shroud and definitely on many software aspects. 

It is, however, really, really well done. The platonic ideal of an XR headset. Now, we wait to see what developers and Apple accomplish over the next few months and how the public reacts.

First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good. by Matthew Panzarino originally published on TechCrunch

Today at its annual WWDC 2023 conference, Apple took the wraps off of the Vision Pro, its long-rumored augmented reality (AR) headset. The Vision Pro is one of Apple’s most ambitious products to date — one years in the making and packed with technology that just might warrant the sky-high price tag.

But there was much more to today’s announcement than hardware. Alongside the Vision Pro, Apple debuted an entirely new operating system, VisionOS, and a slew of apps that’ll be available on the OS — and, by extension, the Vision Pro — at launch.

It’s a lot to keep track of — which is why we created a handy, condensed guide to all that Apple announced around the Vision Pro and VisionOS.

Vision Pro has a ski goggle-like design

The first thing you’ll notice about the Vision Pro is the chassis, which evokes a pair of high-end ski goggles. A tinted, continuous front panel wraps around the wearer’s eyes, acting as a lens and concealing a fan that draws air through the headset to cool the electronics inside.

Around the back of the Vision Pro, there’s a band that can be easily swapped out, and a dial for adjusting the tightness of the headset. Zeiss worked in partnership with Apple to create magnetic lenses for prescription wearers.

Image Credits: Apple

Unlike some AR headsets on the market, the Vision Pro’s battery pack isn’t built into the device itself. A wire running from the rear connects to a battery pack, which provides up to two hours of use. Or Vision Pro wearers can plug into the wall for an extended experience.

One presumes that the displays suck up most of the power. The Vision Pro has two (plus an external panel), one for each eye, with 23 million pixels across both. A custom 3D lens ensures that the UI always remains within view, while features like HDR and “wide color” deliver an ostensibly superior image.

Image Credits: Apple

IR cameras inside of the Vision Pro track your eyes, while downward-facing cameras on the exterior of the chassis track hands. A third set of sensors — lidar sensors — sense objects around the Vision Pro in real time, tracking their positions.

All of the Vision Pro’s sensors — 23 in total, including a dozen cameras, five sensors and six mics — feed into the R1, a new Apple-originated chip designed to “eliminate lag” and stream images to the headset’s display “eight times faster than the blink of an eye” (as per Apple PR). 

Image Credits: Apple

The R1 also enables EyeSight, a feature of the Vision Pro that projects a live feed of the wearer’s eyes to the aforementioned external display. It has the effect of making the headset look transparent — at least in pre-recorded videos. The jury’s out on how well it works in practice, of course.

VisionOS

The software powering the Vision Pro is VisionOS, which Apple describes as “the first OS designed for the ground up for spatial computing” — spatial computing being Apple’s phrase of choice for AR and virtual reality experiences. At the architecture level, VisionOS shares core blocks in common with MacOS and iOS, but adds a “real-time subsystem” for processing interactive visuals on the Vision Pro.

Image Credits: Apple

VisionOS’ three-dimensional interface frees apps from the boundaries of a traditional display so that they can appear side by side at different scales. The UI responds dynamically to natural light, casting shadows to help communicate scale and distance.

At launch, VisionOS will feature apps — including Unity apps, which run natively on the Vision Pro — from Adobe (specifically Lightroom), Microsoft (Office) and other major developers. There’s medical software for looking at renders of anatomy and an engineering app for visualizing physics phenomena, like airflow, on top of real-world objects.

Image Credits: Apple

You’ll get those apps and more from a brand-new app store, which is launching simultaneously with the Vision Pro. Beyond apps, over 100 Apple Arcade titles will be available to play on VisionOS on “day one,” Apple says.

At least one iOS mainstay will make the jump to VisionOS: FaceTime. On the Vision Pro, FaceTime will work by creating a 3D avatar of your face pieced together from scans. Teams, WebEx and Zoom will also support 3D avatars.

Where and how to buy the Apple Vision Pro

The Vision Pro won’t be available for a while — until “early next year,” Apple says — and won’t come cheap. Priced at $3,499, the Vision Pro is significantly more expensive than even the most pessimistic rumors suggested.

On the plus side, customers who book an appointment in an Apple Store will get a demo and a chance to personalize their fit before they buy the Vision Pro. Given the price, I’d say the red carpet treatment is warranted.

Apple Vision Pro: Here’s everything you need to know by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Remotely monitoring patients without violating their privacy is a challenging task. But one co-founder believes that she’s cracked the code.

On a recent episode of TechCrunch Live, TC’s weekly event designed to help founders build better venture-backed businesses, Romi Gubes, the CEO of Sensi.AI, spoke about how she built a company that uses audio-based AI software to detect and predict anomalies that can impact the health of those receiving in-home care.

Romi, a software engineer by training who’s worked at Fortune 500 companies including Cisco, Dell and Vonage, says that she was inspired to found Sensi.AI after an episode of abuse in her daughter’s daycare center.

“It was one of the things in life that really changes your life,” she said. “And I wanted to leverage my technological background in order to help those vulnerable individuals be safe in any kind of care environment.”

That turned her on to the massive shortage of in-house care professionals in the U.S., as well as the effects that “aging in place” without the proper infrastructural support can have.

“As most of you know, as time goes by, there are more and more older adults and less than less younger people that can potentially take care of them,” Romi said. “Very soon, I understood how big the pain in the senior care industry is.”

Image Credits: Sensi.AI

Sensi.AI, founded in 2018, grew rather quickly, scaling today to 70 employees across two countries — the U.S. and Israel — and to customers in 37 states serving thousands of individuals. Along the way, Sensi.AI raised $25 million from investors including Sergey Gribov, a general partner at Flint Capital and a board member at Sensi.AI, who joined for the TC Live discussion.

Bolstered by the pandemic, the market for remote care monitoring solutions is quite large. So how did Sensi.AI manage to stand out from the crowd? Romi attributes it to the company’s differentiated technology, which uses a combination of AI and audio monitoring to detect key events in and around patients’ environments.

Sensi.AI spent years collecting data from the field to train its AI system. To date, the company has captured more than 10 million caregiver interactions from tens of thousands of people throughout the U.S., Romi claims.

“For example, we know to detect if a caregiver has a specific problem with transitioning the older adult from bed to the chair, where this is a huge risk factor for both of them, actually,” she explained. “We’re more focused on the prevention layer in order to really allow professionals to act before something’s happening.”

But what about privacy — both the privacy of the patients and of the caregivers?

Romi pointed out that Sensi.AI doesn’t use cameras for monitoring, unlike some of its competitors. On top of that, the system is compliant with HIPAA — the major medical records privacy bill in the U.S. — and anonymizes data so that the audio data isn’t tied to any individual being monitored.

That contributed to Sensi.AI’s funding success as well, according to Gribov. But the pandemic arguably played a larger role.

“When the pandemic hit, many caregivers weren’t able to get to the homes of the older adult and really serve them, and older adults stayed at home by themselves,” Romi said. “And this is where the need for solutions such as Sensi was very, very clear.”

Image Credits: Sensi.AI

One might assume that Sensi.AI’s grand ambition is to replace care workers entirely. But Romi asserts that this isn’t the case. In fact, she thinks it isn’t feasible from a technical standpoint — and won’t be for the foreseeable future. She hopes, rather, that Sensi.AI can grow into a care tool that clinicians — and even parents of older adults — can use to keep track of what’s going on in the home of a vulnerable patient.

“We can make their work much more efficient, and to get them make better decisions,” Romi said.

Sensi.AI and Flint Capital speak on developing and deploying AI solutions in healthcare by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Hello and welcome back to Max Q!

In this issue:

• Pixxel’s new investor
• Mission delays for Boeing, Rocket Lab
• News from SpaceX and more

Pixxel’s hyperspectral orbital imagery attracts investment from Google

Hyperspectral imagery startup Pixxel has closed $36 million in funding as it prepares to roll out new remote sensing and analytics capabilities to customers.

The LA- and Bangalore-based startup also scored a new strategic investor: Google, the tech giant that’s as well known for its mapping products as it is for its search engine. While Google led the Series B funding round, this does not mark the start of its relationship with Pixxel, CEO Awais Ahmed said in a recent interview.

“We were already working with them as a client before this,” he explained, with an AI research team from Google employing Pixxel’s hyperspectral data in agricultural applications. Google also rolled out its Earth Engine last year, a powerful tool that gives governments and businesses access to a massive trove of Earth observation data from hundreds of sensors in orbit. Many of Pixxel’s users separately use Earth Engine, Ahmed said, and the ultimate goal is to integrate the startup’s data onto that service.

Image Credits: Pixxel

NASA, Boeing delay the first crewed flight test of the Starliner capsule…again

Boeing and NASA said that the first crewed flight test of the Starliner capsule would be further delayed due to a new crop of technical issues with the spacecraft.

The first crewed mission was scheduled to fly two NASA astronauts on July 21 after being pushed back from an earlier April launch date. Officials did not provide a new launch date during a media briefing, though Boeing’s VP of commercial crew, Mark Nappi, said leadership would spend the next week or so figuring out a plan to ensure the capsule is safe for flight.

“The bottom line here is: safety is always our top priority,” a Boeing official said. “It’s always been that way with human spaceflight. And so that’s what drives this decision. You can say we’re disappointed because it means a delay, but the team is proud that we’re making the right choices.”

Image Credits: United Launch Alliance

More news from TC and beyond

• Axiom Space’s second private mission to the International Space Station concluded with a successful splashdown late on May 30. (TechCrunch)
• China aims to land taikonauts on the moon before 2030. Meanwhile, the country is also at work developing its answer to Starlink. (SpaceNews/SpaceNews)
• The European Space Agency is inviting commercial companies to submit proposals for cargo transportation services to and from the ISS. (ESA)
• Hubble Network raised $20 million to build out its satellite network that any Bluetooth-enabled device will be able to connect to. (TechCrunch)
• Rocket Factory Augsburg conducted a full-duration hot fire test of its upper stage for 280 seconds, a first for an EU-based company. (RFA)
• Rocket Lab’s private mission to Venus has slipped to January 2025 after the company missed the launch window last month. (TechCrunch)
• Sierra Space powered up its Dream Chaser spaceplane for the first time. (Sierra Space)
• SpaceX’s role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is not over yet, with the Pentagon ordering more Starlink terminals to go to Ukrainian troops. (TechCrunch)

Max Q is brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. If you enjoy reading Max Q, consider forwarding it to a friend. 

Max Q: Another day, another delay by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch

Gone are the days of turning off your iPhone’s Bluetooth at a red light to allow your friend to wirelessly connect to your car and play some tunes. Say goodbye to passing the USB cable to a passenger so they can have a turn streaming their podcast. New Apple SharePlay features will make fighting for sharing control of in-car entertainment easier for iPhone users.

“Now when the driver’s iPhone is connected to CarPlay, any passenger’s iPhone will automatically suggest joining their session. Just tap to connect,” said Anne Park Shedlosky, director of software program management at Apple, at the company’s 2023 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) Monday. “From there, it’s easy to play your favorite music, control playback and enjoy the ride together.”

SharePlay is Apple’s new solution to watching a TV show or a movie with someone who’s not in the same room as you. It allows friends and family to watch, play games or listen to music together across Apple devices during a FaceTime call. With simultaneous playback and shared controls, users can see and hear everything at the same time on separate devices.

With SharePlay in the car, instead of FaceTime being the conduit for shared content, it’ll be through CarPlay, the Apple platform that runs on the user’s phone and projects navigation, music apps, messaging, phone calls and voice commands to the vehicle’s display screen.

During WWDC, Apple also announced other updates to SharePlay. Instead of connecting through FaceTime, users can bring devices together to instantly start a shared activity using SharePlay. For example, if you’re going on a run with a friend and want to jog to the beat of the same tunes, you can link up your music. Apps that support SharePlay, like Twitch, will also now allow users to bring their iPhones together to watch the same livestream.

Apple didn’t share much car-related news at its developer conference. By contrast, a month ago at Google’s developer conference, the Big Tech giant pushed further into the automotive foreground with a number of new features and services designed for cars, including video conferencing, gaming and YouTube.

Google said that it expects Android Auto, the Android counterpart to Apple’s CarPlay, to be available in around 200 million vehicles by the end of 2023. The company also said it expects the number of cars with the Android Automotive operating system built-in to double by the end of this year. Already, brands like Chevrolet, Polestar, Renault, Honda and Volvo have Google built-in, allowing them to be integrated directly with Google apps like Assistant, Maps and Play.

Aux 2.0: Apple’s SharePlay lets everyone queue up a song in the car by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

Apple didn’t announce any significant AI updates during its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote today, but it did quietly roll out some minor computer vision upgrades with its latest iPhone software, iOS 17. In addition to now letting users turn their own photos into stickers by cutting out the subject of their photos, another new feature called Visual Look Up will allow users to search for recipes directly from a photo.

The addition wasn’t among those previewed during the keynote itself, but rather popped on a teaser page for iOS 17 on Apple’s website after the fact.

There isn’t much detail about how it will work, though it appears to be fairly straightforward from the looks of it. In iOS 17, photos of food will be identified as such, and you’ll then be able to search for similar dishes. For instance, in the photo illustrating this on the page, photos of bowls of quinoa lead to suggested recipes for other quinoa meals, and specifically breakfast foods, as shown in the photo. If this works as described, it could be a handy way to get inspiration about what to cook, without having to search across the web, though it’s not likely going to be able to guide you to the specific recipe for the dish pictured.

The addition, however, is another example of how Apple is subtly redirecting users away from Google Search by having them start their queries directly on the iPhone. In this case, the search results provided would link users to the recipe’s website, bypassing Google, while in years past Spotlight improvements saw users skipping a Google search to reach Wikipedia pages or to look up information on actors, movies, shows, and musicians from special cards that appear in Spotlight’s search results.

Spotlight’s only major update this year isn’t focused on web searches, though, but rather showcases something called “Top Hits” — or common app shortcuts — when you search for an app. For instance, a search for Photos may suggest shortcuts like Recent or Favorites.

Elsewhere in iOS 17, the Visual Look Up improvements will allow users to pause videos to then look up information on the subject by tapping on an info icon.

The same tool will let you look up info on the subject that you cut out of your own photo — a feature introduced last year with iOS 16. One of the more entertaining additions at the time, you can “pick up” an object from a photo with the press of your finger. The system can identify pets, plants, landmarks, and other objects in your photos. The image cut then be pasted into a text message or in other applications.

With iOS 17, Apple will let you turn these cutouts into a sticker. Through the new Live Stickers feature, users can cut out the subject of their own photos, or now, paused videos, to save as stickers, which can also include effects. The stickers can then be accessed across iOS 17, including in third-party apps.

iOS 17 can suggest recipes for similar dishes from a photo on your iPhone by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

In case you were not allowed to stop working long enough to tune into Apple’s series of product announcements Monday, let me catch you up: The Cupertino-based technology company has a new device coming out called the Vision Pro. It’s an augmented reality headset that, while it looks pretty spiffy and is packed with neat tech, is both expensive and not coming to its first market until early next year.

Given the sheer amount of anticipation that the Apple headset brought along with it, you might be slightly underwhelmed to learn that the Vision Pro will cost $3,499, and if you are not in the United States, it will take a rather long time to make it to your door.

Investors in Apple shares bid the company’s stock to all-time highs ahead of the event. During the product informercial, shares of the company held up for a period, before losing steam along with the rest of the Nasdaq Composite index.

Observe the following chart, set to track percentage changes during the day:

Apple’s new headset fails to excite investors, but sends shares of Unity soaring by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

Apple unveiled its new Vision Pro augmented reality headset on Monday during its annual WWDC keynote, along with visionOS, the operating system that’ll power it. The hardware looked extremely impressive, and if the highly-polished demos of how the software will work at all reflect what it’s like to use one in person, then this will be an amazing device that truly exceeds the performance and expectations of anything that has come before it in AR. But even if it works exactly as well as Apple would have you believe from its highly-produced debut, and even if it ships next year as planned and people can go ahead and buy it, the vision that Apple’s selling here doesn’t really exist in one fundamental way — owing to the tearjerking $3,499 price tag Apple Vision Pro carries alongside its laundry list of impressive specs.

Expectations were high for the final price of Apple’s headset leading up to this event, but ‘high’ generally meant estimates around the $2,000 mark, or up to $2,500 for some. $3,499 basically exceeds any predictions, and had the effect of instantly deflating most of the excitement and anticipation from those of us in the newsroom watching the event unfold live and commenting on the news via our shared Slack channel. Apple did a fantastic job with the lead-up — so much so that it convinced more than a few of us that this was a product we wanted (“needed,” we said somewhat facetiously) in our lives. But the price reveal turned any ‘would buy’ in the room into a ‘definitely not’ without hesitation.

Looking back at the technical specifications Apple detailed for Vision Pro in the presentation before it dropped the curtain on the price, you can definitely see why it costs that much. The displays alone, two micro-OLED screens that can provide true 4K resolution, are probably jaw-droppingly pricey, let along the fancy custom built-in speakers, lidar space sensing, dual onboard custom processors and so much more. Apple Vision Pro is “the most advanced personal electronics device ever” as Apple put it during the presentation, another slide that, when considered now, was definitely put in there to help take away some of the sticker shock of the pricing.

The pricing means this will appeal to only a cadre of buyers that can afford to spend lavishly on something that, by Apple’s own admission, seems intended to primarily augment and supplement the use of your other pricey kit, including the iPhone and Mac (though at least it isn’t reliant on either for functioning). It’s beyond even stretch range for a lot of tech-forward early adopters who want to get in on the ground floor of something new and exciting.

All that said, it’s not like there isn’t precedent for something that’s out of reach for most laying the groundwork for tech that becomes essentially fundamental for all in the future: The original IBM PC introduced in 1981 retailed for $1,565 (or almost double that for a properly specced out version) which is over $5,000 in today’s dollars. Personal computers were rather expensive for quite a while before benefitting from pricing curves as they grew in popularity.

Apple’s doing a lot here that’s custom, that’s extremely advanced, and that doesn’t scale affordably given the production methods available now. All of that could change, especially with a robust developer story — something this announcement, and the initial slate of sales of this hardware, are definitely intended to encourage. But all that means that what Apple showed during its official unveiling today wasn’t an accurate reflection of a reality any of us will know anytime soon; at best it’s a vision likely five years out in terms of true mass market appeal, providing all the pieces fall into place correctly between now and then.

Apple’s Vision Pro headset seems too good to be real — because it basically is by Darrell Etherington originally published on TechCrunch

Apple announced a slew of new iPhone features at this year’s WWDC keynote, like FaceTime voicemails and Check In. But even more new additions are coming to iOS 17 beyond what was announced on stage. Along with several other safety features, Apple is releasing Sensitive Content Warning, which lets adult users know if they receive a photo or video that they might not want to see.

In the screen that Apple shared in its blog post, this feature seems to be specifically designed for nude photos and videos. If you receive a nude image, a pop-up will appear asking if you want to see this sensitive content. When receiving an unsolicited nude, this could help users avoid seeing something that they didn’t consent to see.

“Naked photos and videos show the private body parts that are usually covered by underwear or bathing suits,” the pop-up explains. “It’s not your fault, but naked photos and videos can be used to hurt you.” The screen goes on to explain that the person in the photo or video may or may not have consented to this media being shared.

Users are presented with three options — in addition to opting into or out of seeing the image or video, they can tap on “ways to get help.” Since iOS 17 hasn’t rolled out yet, we don’t know where this link directs, but if used correctly, it could be a good way to share resources about how to proceed in situations of sexual harassment.

Apple didn’t share whether or not this feature is turned on by default, or if it can be disabled, but typically these safety tools can be toggled on or off.

Like other communication safety features on the iPhone, the processing to detect possible sensitive content all occurs on-device. So, that means that if you send someone a nude photo (consensually, please!), then Apple isn’t accessing your private images.

New iPhone feature warns about unwanted nudes by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

There are books left to be written of the good and bad about Apple’s leap into the world of augmented reality hardware. We’ll no doubt still be gathering our thoughts for some time, but one thing is clear: this is a well designed machine. Sitting there on a well lit post, surrounded by a scrump of international reporters, the Vision Pro looks pretty cool.

Not sure exactly what I was expecting after today’s keynote, but when you get right in front of it, the industrial design is undeniable. It’s an impressive feat of engineering, even if the actual execution of product and experience is not entirely clear. This is likely the most we’re going to get for a bit. Keep in mind, the product is coming next year, and the company is very focused on developers at the moment.

The design language clearly takes more than a few design cues from Apple’s own AirPods Max line, especially in terms of the band. The front glass, on the other hand, is something altogether new for the company. Without any apps running currently, it’s a bit of a black void, with swirling colors, not unlike the design you get on the top of the HomePod.

Will say with some relief, that the external battery pack is small enough to fit in the wearer’s pocket. It’s shorter, but thicker than than an iPhone. Obviously no external battery pack is the best external battery pack, but the company needed to get a system that operate for at least a couple of hours on a charge.

The digital crown is a bit larger than I’d anticipated — though you do need a bit of size when fumbling for it with your eyes covered.

A closer look at Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro headset by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

On Monday, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao, as well as BAM Trading and BAM Management, for lying to regulators about operations, among other charges.

While the suit raised eyebrows across the industry, what stood out to TechCrunch+ was the agency’s direct stance on a handful of crypto assets being securities. That’s something crypto community members have argued against in the past.

The total filing was 136 pages long and carried a lot of information. So we dove deep into the securities section of the document ourselves to get an understanding of what cryptocurrencies the SEC views as securities and what this could mean for the ecosystem.

In the filing, the SEC alleges that Binance and BAM Trading violated federal securities laws by “illegally conducting unregistered offers and sales of securities to U.S. investors” through BNB, BUSD, its “BNB Vault” program and “Simple Earn” program, as well as BAM Trading’s staking-as-a-service program.

Since its inception, BNB and BUSD has “been offered and sold as an investment contract and, therefore, as a security,” the filing stated. This stance of crypto assets and programs being offered as an “investment contract” is repeated throughout the filing for each crypto asset mentioned as the de facto argument for what qualifies as securities.

Aside from Binance-related tokens, the crypto assets traded on Binance.com and Binance.US include assets that were “offered and sold as securities,” like Solana’s SOL, Cardano’s ADA, Polygon’s MATIC, Filecoin’s FIL, Cosmos’ ATOM, Sandbox’s SAND, Decentraland’s MANA, Algorand’s ALGO, Axie Infinity’s AXS and Coti’s COTI tokens. What made the agency highlight these cryptocurrencies, and not the hundreds of others tradable assets on the exchange, is unclear.

Regardless, the SEC filing allocated 53 pages worth of context, diving into each of the 12 crypto assets mentioned above.

As for its BNB Vault and Simple Earn programs, from October 2019 to October 2022, anywhere from 3,200 to 16,500 U.S. investors participated in its Simple Earn investment plan, and over 1,400 investors participated in the BNB Vault program, according to the filing.

This highlights the fact that the SEC has, once again, taken the stance that most cryptocurrencies (aside from Bitcoin) are securities.

Per the March CFTC’s filing against Binance, the regulator said certain digital assets, including bitcoin, ether, litecoin and “at least two fiat-backed stablecoins,” tether and the Binance USD, “as well as other virtual currencies as alleged herein, are ‘commodities.’”

So the see-saw game of figuring out which crypto assets are securities or commodities stands. But cryptocurrencies are becoming increasingly defined as securities as the SEC continues to regulate by enforcement.

SEC claims BNB and BUSD are securities, including major tokens like SOL, ADA and MATIC by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Apple just unveiled its augmented reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro. After showing the potential use cases for the device, the company said a bit more about the technical specifications.

From the outside, the Apple Vision Pro looks a bit like ski goggles. On the front of the device, Apple is using three-dimensionally formed laminated glass. The glass flows into the frame, a bit like the Apple Watch.

There’s a digital crown on the top of the device that you can use for adjustments. The main body of the device is made of a custom aluminum alloy with some holes for ventilation. There are a ton of chips, sensors and displays in the device.

The rest of the device is a modular system. You can swap the part that rests on your face so that it rests well on your face whether you have a big head or a small head.

At the back of the device, there is a flexible headband that attaches magnetically so that it can also be easily swapped. It looks a bit like the Alpine Loop on the Apple Watch Ultra.

On the side of the device, there are two speakers next to your ears that deliver spatial audio. Apple has developed a technology called audio raytracing for spatial audio.

Inside the headset, Apple has partnered with Zeiss for glasses that magnetically attach to the lenses, with vision correction if needed.

When it comes to the main system on a chip, Apple uses its own Apple M2 chip. The display system uses micro OLED so that Apple can fit 44 pixels in the space of an iPhone pixel. Of course, those pixels will be much closer to your face so that will be an important factor as well.

Each pixel is 7.5-micron wide and there are 23 million pixels across two panels that are the size of a post stamp. For reference, a 4K TV features a bit more than 8 million pixels.

Apple promises video that can be rendered at “true 4K resolution with wide colors.” And text is supposed to “look super sharp from any angle.” We will have to check that if we can get some hands-on time with the Apple Vision Pro.

Overall, there are 12 cameras, five sensors and six microphones. On the outside, there are two cameras pointing at the real world, and two cameras pointing downward to track your hands. There’s a LiDAR scanner and a TrueDepth camera.

Inside the device, there are two IR cameras and a ring of LEDs to track your eyes. With this eye-tracking technology, Apple can display your eyes on the outside of the device thanks to a 3D display that sort of make the device look transparent. Apple calls this feature EyeSight.

There’s also a new R1 chip that has been specifically designed for real-time processing of the real world. It is also supposed to reduce motion sickness.

Finally, yes, the device works with an external battery pack that you can put in your pocket for instance. It looks like an iPhone 11 with no display and no camera — a smooth rectangle pebble. It uses a proprietary connector that attaches to the side of the headset. Apple promises two hours of battery life, but you can also use the device when plugged in.

The company expects to sell the Apple Vision Pro for $3,499 and it will be available for purchase in early 2024.

The Apple Vision Pro features an M2 chip, a ton of sensors and a new R1 chip by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch

Making sure loved ones got home safe at the end of the night is something we all try to do. But it can be easy for that “Home safe! ” message to be missed or forgotten. Apple’s new Check In feature for iPhones is a simple, ingenious way to alert your friends or partner that you have arrived safe and sound. Here’s how to use it!

Let’s get this out of the way first: this feature is only for iPhones for now, because it uses iMessage. If you’ve got a multi-platform group, check out one of the solid safety apps out there for now.

Check In lives in iMessage’s new expandable app menu: the little plus sign to the left of the text field. Open up the thread with the person or people you want to be alerted when you get home. Tap the plus, and in the list of apps that pops up, choose Check In.

Your iPhone almost certainly already knows where you live, since that’s where you spend the most time. It’ll check where you are now and give an estimate of how long it will take you to get home — whether you’re walking or driving. If it assumes wrong (maybe it’s a long walk or a short drive), hit the big “Edit” button and you can adjust that time.

This even works if you’re already at home — say you’re going to run to the store late at night, or taking an early morning run, and want your husband to know when you’re back safe. You just estimate the length of the trip and it’ll alert them when you get back.

If you meet a friend on your run or decide to stop at the store on the way home, you can easily open up the Check In and add a few minutes to the expected arrival time.

Your phone will monitor your progress and if something seems off, it’ll ask you if things are OK — if not, you can send an alert.

To be clear, Check In doesn’t share your location in real time — you can do that separately if you want, but that’s up to you. However, if you don’t arrive at home on time, and don’t disable it, your friends will be able to see your current location, the route you took getting home, and your phone’s battery and signal levels. All this is encrypted, by the way!

When you return, everyone you’ve included on your Check In thead will get a notification that you’re back. Of course it’s still possible to miss this on their end, but it minimizes the chance you go straight to bed without letting someone know you made it. And if anything goes awry, they’ll know right away.

If you or some of your group aren’t on iPhone, there are still options for letting your loved ones know you’re OK — just search for safety apps to find one that fits your needs. But for iPhone users, Check In’s ease of use and integration with iMessage will likely propel it to become the most commonly used in no time.

How to tell friends you got home safe with iPhone’s new Check In feature by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

At WWDC, Apple unveiled its long-awaited AR headset, which consumers have been anticipating for years. But how much will the Apple Vision Pro cost?

Apple Vision Pro will retail for $3,499, and it will be available for purchase in early 2024.

For comparison, Meta announced its Quest 3 last week at the price point of $499, while its Quest 2 is retailing for $299. But Meta’s high-performance headset launched with a $1499 price tag, though it seems like it’s available for $999 at a number of retailers.

Unlike Meta’s headsets, the Apple Vision Pro uses augmented reality, rather than virtual reality. The difference is that augmented reality is less immersive, allowing users to take advantage of the technology without being completely divorced from their surroundings. Plus, the Apple Vision Pro uses hand tracking as a control, eliminating the need to have separate handheld devices.

Similar to the Meta Quest Pro, Apple is advertising this device to be used in part for the workplace — its VisionOS runs on the same framework as iOS and iPad OS, meaning it will be compatible for many existing apps. But already, Apple says that the headset will work with Microsoft Office apps, as well as video conferencing services like WebEX and Zoom.

With micro-OLED displays, spatial audio, a 3D-like camera and many other high-end features, it’s no surprise that the Apple Vision Pro is a bit on the pricey end. So, it might be more designed for enterprise users than ordinary consumers.

The Apple Vision Pro headset will cost $3499, out early 2024 by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Apple today showed off its Vision Pro VR/AR headset. The device is powered by the company’s own M2 chip, but in order to do the real-time processing from the company’s wall of sensors, Apple had to develop a brand new processor too – which it dubs the R1.

The R1 chip is taking all the sensors embedded into the headset to create precise head and hand tracking, along with real-time 3D mapping and eye-tracking.

The specialized chip was designed specifically for the challenging task of real-time sensor processing, taking the input from 12 cameras, five sensors (including a LIDAR sensor!) and six microphones. The company claims it can process the sensor data within 12 milliseconds – eight times faster than the blink of an eye – and says this will dramatically reduce the motion sickness plagueing many other AR/VR systems.

Apple says that using all this vision and sensor data means it doesn’t need to use controllers and instead uses hand gesture tracking and eye tracking to control the experience.

The combination of an M2 chip to pack a ton of computing power and an R1 chip to deal with inputs, Apple describes its device as the most advanced device ever and claims it filed 5,000 patents to make it all happen.

Apple was short on details regarding the R1 processor, but we’ll keep an eye out for more technical specs.

To reduce motion sickness in VR, Apple developed new R1 chip by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

VisionOS is the name of Apple’s newest operating system — the OS that powers the Apple Vision Pro, Apple’s soon-to-launch augmented reality headset.

Unveiled at its annual WWDC conference, Apple describes VisionOS as “the first OS designed for the ground up for spatial computing” — spatial computing being Apple’s phrase of choice for augmented and virtual reality experiences. At the architecture level, VisionOS shares core blocks in common with MacOS and iOS, but adds a “real-time subsystem” for processing interactive visuals on the Apple Vision Pro.

VisionOS’ three-dimensional interface frees apps from the boundaries of a display, so that they can appear side by side at different scales. It responds dynamically to natural light, casting shadows to help communicate scale and distance.

At launch, VisionOS will feature apps — including Unity apps, which run natively on the Vision Pro — from Adobe (specifically Lightroom), Microsoft (Teams and Office), Cisco (Webex) Zoom and more. There’s medical software for looking at renders of anatomy, and an engineering app for visualizing things physics phenomena, like airflow, on top of real-world objects.

You’ll get those apps and more from a brand-new app store, which is launching simultaneously with the Vision Pro.

Apple highlighted the new security system in VisionOS, called Optic ID, which uses iris scans for authentication. The data’s encrypted and works with Secure Enclave, the subsystem integrated into Apple system-on-chips. But Apple made it clear during today’s pre-recorded presentation that telemetry data, like how you’re interacting with apps and websites, stays private.

VisionOS is Apple’s latest operating system by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch