APX Labs Grabs $13 Million For Enterprise Smart Glasses Platform

APX Labs, makers of the Skylight smart glasses development platform, announced a $13 million investment today.

The round was led by NEA, but there were several others parties involved including CNF Investments, GE Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, SineWave Ventures, and other unnamed investors. Today’s round brings the total raised to $29 million.

While the company was happy about the money, CEO Brian Ballard, seemed most excited by the strategic investments from GE Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, which he felt really validated what the company was trying to do.

GE is a customer and they are going to do a large deployment within the next 12 months that will be a serious test case for the platform.

SkyLight is a vendor-agnostic smart glasses platform. That means it works across a variety of glasses manufacturers including Google Glass, which is focusing on enterprise use cases for now and others like Sony Smart Eye Glasses, among others.

Photo Credit: APX Labs

The hardware when used in conjunction with the Skylight software enables employees working in any industrial scenario to get instructions via the smart glasses interface while keeping their hands free.

Skylight interface example. Photo Credit: APX Labs

As for Salesforce, it sees smart glasses as the interface for the internet of Things, a trend it has made clear it is very much interested in. For now, Salesforce wants to push smart glasses technology to field service workers as a way to undertake repairs in the field hands-free.

You can imagine, there are any number of scenarios where this could be useful for these companies. For example, at GE you have people working on huge industrial equipment like locomotives, jet engines and wind turbines. Using smart glasses with Skylight, they are able to assess the situation, while getting information via a smart glasses interface with their hands free. It’s clear how this would be much more efficient than working with a tablet or laptop.

In some scenarios where a worker may be in a hazmat suit or inside a large machine, working with a laptop or tablet isn’t even possible. The smart glasses enable the worker to get information directly through the glasses.

Ballard sees this industry just beginning to emerge from first generation hardware and software, and moving into some larger scale deployments, like his company’s work with GE.

They currently claim to have dozens of customers including six out of the Fortune 10. Ballard wouldn’t name them all, although GE is one. Regardless, those are some serious players interested in this technology, and it shows that the market could poised to take off in a big way.

“Our target now is the biggest manufacturers on the planet,” he said.

The company also has some impressive partners to help build that market including Microsoft, Accenture, SAP and Deloitte.

It’s still early days for the Herndon, Virginia company, but Ballard hopes to use this money to continue developing the product, scaling the company to a wider market and supporting a larger number of smart glasses as they become available.

Comments

Square’s New Apple Pay And Chip Card Reader Available To Pre-Order

Shortly after going public, Square announced that its new card reader is now available to pre-order on its website for $49. The new reader will ship in early 2016. It’s been a slow roll-out for the company’s new reader as Square first teased it at Apple’s WWDC in June. Compared to the good old Square reader that you put in your headphone jack, this one packs a few new features. First, it supports Apple Pay, and potentially other contactless payment systems. It has an NFC chip and a tokenization system for secure contactless payments. Second, the new bigger design comes with a new slot for chip cards in case you can’t pay with your phone. Finally, it’s a wireless reader that connects to your phone or tablet using Bluetooth. It has a small built-in battery and you can recharge it with a standard microUSB port. According to Square’s website , 100 retailers are already using the new reader. But the company has yet to ship the new rea...

Report: Amazon Is Building An App To Let Normal People Deliver Packages For Pay

Amazon is apparently enlisting everyday humans in its network of endless online shopping delivery. The WSJ reports that the ecommerce giant is working on an app internally that would allow the average consumer to make a little cash by picking up Amazon packages at various retail locations and dropping them off at their final destination. WSJ’s sources did not have a timeline for the release of this product, internally called ‘On My Way,’ and were unsure whether it would launch at all. Amazon has spent years not only iterating the way it tailors your online shopping experience — the mega retailer has one of the best suggestion engines in the business — but also the way that it gets you your products with speed and convenience. Besides the standard shipping (or two-day for Prime members), Amazon has fiddled with the idea of letting Uber drivers and yellow cabs deliver products same-day, as well as using bike messengers and third-party delivery services for Prime N...

Xiaomi’s 15.6” Notebook To Cost Less Due To Older CPU & GPU

Xiaomi is, first and foremost, a smartphone manufacturer. This company tends to dabble in pretty much anything tech-related, and they will release their first notebook soon. Inventec has already confirmed that they’re working on (one of) the company’s notebook, and that the device is expected to arrive in April next year. Well, Inventec is working on one of the company’s notebooks, but three different ones have been mentioned, the 12.5, 13.3 and 15.6-inch models. Inventec is working on the 12.5-inch model, while Compal is rumored to be working on the 13.3-inch variant. The 15.6-inch notebook is the most interesting one here, read on. The specifications of the 15.6-inch Xiaomi notebook have surfaced a while back, and according to that report, the device will sport a 15.6-inch 1080p (1920 x 1080) display, 8GB of RAM and will be powered by Intel’s Core i7 4th-generation SoC. Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 760M GPU is said to be included in this package as well, and...

eGym raises $45M Series C for cloud-connected gym equipment and fitness software

eGym , the Munich-based startup that offers cloud-connected gym equipment and supporting cloud software and app for the fitness training floor, has closed $45 million in Series C funding. The round was led by new investor HPE Growth Capital, while existing investors, including Highland Europe, also participated. The problem that eGym is looking to solve is that, whilst gyms have moved from a bodybuilder market to a mass market in the last 20 years, the technology in gyms lags behind. That’s despite the fact that better use of technology can help to reduce customer churn, the biggest pain-point of both gym operator and gym users. Comprising of an app for both gym user and trainer, combined with the company’s connected strength machines, the eGym Cloud makes it possible for gym members to receive better fitness instruction and an evolving and personalised fitness plan based on data collected as they workout. And by providing a better workout feedback loop, gym goers can get an i...

The EHang 184 Is A Human-Sized Drone Taking Off At CES

We’ve seen some pretty cool stuff on day 1 of CES 2016, but probably nothing more eye-catching than the EHang 184, a human-sized drone built by the Chinese UAV company EHang . Yes you heard right — a giant autonomous drone that fits a human. It’s basically what you would expect to see if someone shrunk you down to the size of a LEGO and stuck you next to a DJI Inspire. Except no one was shrunk, and the giant flying machine was sitting smack in the middle of the CES drone section. EHang, which was founded in 2014 and has raised about $50M in venture fundingto date, was pretty gung-ho about telling everyone at CES that the 184 was the future of personal transport. And for the most part, people were too in awe to question them. But the reality is that the company probably was using the 184 as more of a marketing tool for their standard-sized drones like the Ghost . Not that we’re saying that the 184 will never be a real thing, just that it probably isn’t co...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog