LeapMotion to be acquired for $30m by UltraHaptics | Hacker News Reader

LeapMotion to be acquired for $30m by UltraHaptics

theverge.com

32 pointsbhouston14 comments

Raised $100m thus all investors are underwater and founders/employees got wiped out.

I guess some investors got liquity preferences so maybe a few are at least whole.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/leap-motion

They were launched right when ML was going mainstream & ability to infer the proprietary algos became widespread by simply learning hand state from their own data points & raw input images from commodity RGB cameras.

This is a bit sad but inevitable. They were trying to cover so much ground and execute to perfection. Whatever lead they had shrank with time and advances on fronts outside the hw and core dev may not see the light of day.

I purchased one of the first LeapMotion devices, and I was not terribly impressed with the performance and returned it. Not sure whether the IP has much value with Google's Soli [1] project seeming to be further ahead.

[1] https://atap.google.com/soli/

That's too bad. I do hope someone continues to develop immersive AR rather than the AR/VR split we have how. ML should have been iterating on a platform and improvements to speed, FoV, etc. Feel sorry for the employees who really believed they would change the world. Note to self: be cautious of companies with 'magic' in name or operating in isolation.

Magic Leap != LeapMotion

Oh thanks Sorry. I remember them too the air fingers. Also a great idea. The latency and sometimes loss of virtual digits was quirky but I did have hopes it would get incorporared into a VR hmd. 30m is better than bust.

For what it's worth, the performance improved quite a bit with subsequent firmware updates. It was quite a remarkable device that impressed anyone I let try it, but finding a mass-market use-case proved impossible. They tried to pivot to VR, but it was very late. I think going after the consumer market (with an app store to be filled with games) was a mistake. Easy to say in hindsight, of course.

> the performance improved quite a bit with subsequent firmware updates.

But it didn't improve enough to be useful for anything practical. The most useful thing I could make it do reliably was detect swiping your hand left and right. I was really hoping I could use it as a mouse replacement on laptops, but accurately tracking individual finger placement never materialized.

Looks like you are making the classic confusion between Magic Leap and Leap Motion. Leap Motion is finger tracking.

At least maybe the name confusion will stop. I must admit I think Magic Leap is going to see a similar fate.

Their whole value proposition was clever software to compute on stream from stereo cameras. Jumping from VR (small market) to automotive and piggybacking on self driving seemed as such an obvious move.

I'm surprised Ultrahaptics had $30M to spend. Their product is super niche.

how do you know it is $30m in cash?

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