Canada might once again play a more important role in Google’s augmented and virtual reality eyewear plans.
Google is in “final talks” to acquire AdHawk Microsystems, a Waterloo, Ont.-based startup that makes eye-tracking technology, for $115 million, Bloomberg reports. AdHawk staff would join the team developing Android XR, Google’s recently unveiled platform for mixed-reality headsets and smart glasses.
The deal could be completed as soon as this week, according to the insiders. If it moves forward, $15 million from the offer would depend on AdHawk meeting key performance goals.
AdHawk technology is built into smart glasses and “metaverse hardware” headsets, but is already selling its MindLink glasses to clinicians and researchers.
BetaKit reached out to Google and AdHawk for comment, but did not receive responses by press time.
AdHawk has developed a micro-electromechanical (MEMS) eye tracker and chip combination that the company says provides distinct advantages over conventional camera-based systems. The company claims the system requires 1,000 times less data, but generates sampling rates (that is, data collection rates) 10 times higher than alternatives. The technology is billed as more accurate and responsive with better battery life.
AdHawk technology is built into smart glasses and “metaverse hardware” headsets, but is already selling its MindLink glasses to clinicians and researchers. In 2024, it launched MindLink Air glasses that are marketed as everyday brain health trackers.
The firm already has investments from several major players in the wearable technology space. It raised $5 million from Intel Capital through a Series A round in 2017, with Brightspark Ventures also participating. Other backers include Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses co-creator EssilorLuxottica as well as Samsung, which developed the Project Moohan prototype headset that Google uses to showcase Android XR, its operating system for extended-reality devices. The Sony Innovation Fund, HP Tech Ventures, Canso, and Xchange have also invested in AdHawk.
Eye tracking is playing an increasingly important role in mixed-reality hardware. In both Project Moohan and Apple’s Vision Pro headset, wearers use their eyes to navigate the interface—they just have to look at items and make hand gestures (such as finger pinches) to interact.
Emma Bauer, senior vice president of integrations at Tobii, an eye-tracking company whose tech underlies Sony’s PlayStation VR2 headset, explained to BetaKit why advancements in eye-tracking technology will be important for the development of headsets and smart glasses. Eye tracking not only improves user interaction, but is more size-efficient than comparable technologies, and can boost performance by focusing computational power on where the user is looking, Bauer said.
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Smart glasses will one day “directly handle more tasks that are traditionally done with smartphones,” she added.
There are challenges in adding eye-tracking to smart glasses that brands like Google and Tobii will have to solve. It’s difficult to fit the hardware into the tight confines of eyewear, Bauer noted. She further pointed out that small batteries might also require a “balance” between capabilities and efficiency, and that the tracking has to be consistent across many faces and eyes even as the glasses jostle around from day-to-day movement.
Bauer claimed it can also take “years of refinement” to produce tiny, efficient components, and that companies might need to train their algorithms on “vast datasets” to account for differences in faces, eyes, and movement.
If the acquisition goes through, it would be just the latest business move to suggest Google is investing heavily in eye tracking. In January, the tech giant acquired some of the engineering team behind HTC’s Vive VR products in a deal worth $250 million. Google previously entered the smart glasses space in 2013 with Google Glass, which failed to catch on commercially and was discontinued in 2023.
AdHack would also not be the only Kitchener-Waterloo-based smart glasses company Google has purchased. In 2020, parent company Alphabet acquired Kitchener smart glasses maker North, after the company’s failed rebrand and launch of the Focals 1.0 glasses.
Feature image: Samsung’s Project Moohan headset, used to demonstrate Google’s Android XR platform. Image courtesy Samsung.