AR/VR

Are We There Yet?

“It is augmented reality that is driving our future,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said at the beginning of the company’s first-ever investor day. 

“AR is the next major shift in computing,” Spiegel predicted, but we’ll need a decade before it fully materializes. Do Facebook and Apple have thoughts? *checks Emerging Tech Brew’s archives* They do. 

• Mark Zuckerberg mostly agrees, as he predicted last year that we’ll get “breakthrough” AR glasses this decade. 
• Tim Cook thinks AR “will pervade our entire lives,” and at this point, Apple’s top secret mixed-reality ambitions are really not-so-secret. 

Right now, nearly everyone who interacts with AR does so through a phone. We won’t know the winning horse(s) in smart glasses for a while. 

What we do know

Qualcomm’s XR chipset will power many next-gen AR and VR devices. Yesterday, the chipmaker dropped its reference design, a hardware blueprint for companies that want to build AR glasses based on the XR1 and other available technologies. 

Qualcomm’s prototype is a glimpse into AR’s near future, and the glasses pack powerful technology. But they must be wired to a phone, computer, or puck. “And for that reason, I’m out.”—the average consumer

• AR hardware still has many technical constraints, from power management to processing power. 
• Current price points and form factors appeal to commercial buyers. But beyond early adopters, a consumer market has yet to take shape.  

In fully virtual land

This week’s big VR headline comes courtesy of Sony. The PlayStation 5 will get its own VR system, the company said yesterday.  

• What Sony’s promising: More immersive VR, a higher res-headset, new tracking capabilities, and next-gen controllers with additional inputs. 
• When: Sony will send out developer kits soon, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan told WaPo, but the company hasn’t landed on a launch date. So...not 2021. 
• Easter egg: The glasses will have “future-proof technology,” Sony SVP Hideaki Nishino flexed. 

Big picture: Depending on who you ask, VR is either AR’s competitor or a technological bridge to it. AR hardware will eventually be a bigger consumer market, but capable VR products are available right now or close on the horizon. 

MOBILITY

Electric Rickshaws Are Here

Amazon’s five-year plan in India: 10,000 electric delivery vehicles deployed by 2025. Yesterday, it took a big step toward that by announcing a partnership with Mahindra, the Indian e-mobility giant. 

The announcement may have made things official, but Amazon and Mahindra have been getting busy for a while. 

• The Treo Zor—Mahindra’s three-wheel EV with a ~1,200 lb carrying capacity—has already been deployed in seven cities, including New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. 

Looking ahead: Close to 100 of the electric rickshaws are in circulation so far, but Amazon India expects to ramp up that number for use by its delivery service partners. Amazon's betting big on e-comm in India, and these EVs are part of the strategy.  

Zoom out: For India’s part, the government has thrown its weight behind promoting EVs and the development of charging infrastructure. In 2015, it kicked off a seven-year FAME initiative (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric vehicles). Since it’s slated to wrap up on March 31, 2022, there’s only one year left to advance those goals—and the Amazon-Mahindra linkup could act as a propeller. 

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AI

Recs on Recs

Our take on Spotify’s announcements this week: Come for the automated playlist and ad tech updates, stay for news of a Barack + Bruce podcast. 

The streaming giant held its first (virtual) event in almost three years on Monday. Chief R&D officer Gustav Söderström’s statement to Protocol sums it up: “The bet we’re making with the whole company is that audio is now software.” 

Even the machines listen to podcasts 

Spotify is building and scaling its podcast recommendation algorithm to match its music one. And it’s betting on machine listening—how algorithms make sense of audio signals—to advance podcast discovery. Think: accurate content classification at scale.

• Machine listening works to understand a podcast’s content type, and what’s talked about, in order to classify it under a category or subcategory (vegan cooking, for instance). 
• The feature is currently being tested in the US before rolling out to other locations next year. 

Bottom line: The strategies Spotify is using to push its algorithms forward aren’t necessarily surprising—they fit with the company’s decision to zero in on ads, podcasts, and recommendation accuracy. And they track with its latest big-ticket buys. 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: The US Postal Service has awarded Oshkosh Defense a multibillion-dollar fleet modernization contract that will cover 10 years and tens of thousands of vehicles. The USPS says it will equip the vehicles with either fuel-efficient engines or battery-electric powertrains.

Quote: “It’s an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions, and the amount of energy that’s consumed in processing those transactions is staggering.” —Janet Yellen, with a bearish take on bitcoin 

Read: Esquire profiles Beeple, a Wisconsin artist with 1.8 million Instagram followers. We briefly mentioned his work Monday in our NFT story: Christie’s is auctioning his pixel art, The First 5000 Days. Bidding starts tomorrow.

Get in: Tired of meme stocks? Give art a shot. Masterworks lets you invest in multi-million dollar works by artists like Basquiat at a fraction of the price. Brew readers can skip the 17,500-person waitlist today.*

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Fisker is tapping contract manufacturer Foxconn to build its EVs. 
• Motional, the Hyundai and Aptiv joint robotaxi venture, says it will go fully driverless in 2023.  
• Instacart is exploring the use of automated, bot-staffed warehouses, the FT reports. ICYMI: DoorDash recently acquired a salad-making robot startup. 
• Codecademy raised $40 million, its first new capital in four years. 
• FarmWise, an agricultural robotics startup, is getting into autonomous crop dusting. 
• Lucid Motors will SPAC at $24 billion, one of the biggest SPAC deals to date.
• Facebook and Australia have negotiated a truce for now. 

TRIVIA

For this week’s trivia, we’re throwing it back to the history of the smartphone. 

Take the quiz here. 

MARKET RESEARCH

Archer, an eVTOL startup, said yesterday that it plans to launch its first urban air mobility (UAM) network in Los Angeles “by 2024.” In addition to LA, early US contenders for air taxis include Orlando and Dallas. 

To all of you, especially residents in those cities—Do you want eVTOL aircraft? Would you ride in one? Shoot us a note if you have thoughts. 

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• The NFT market tripled last year and is still gaining momentum
• Nvidia’s plan for weathering the global chip shortage
• States vs. Big Tech: The latest regulation rundown 

✤ A Note From Masterworks

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