Google Acquires Micro LED Maker Raxium to Produce AR Displays

Google has reportedly inked a deal to buy Raxium, a 5-year-old startup developing “tiny light-emitting diodes” for displays for augmented and mixed-reality devices.

Raxium doesn’t have a commercial product and its work is based on Micro LEDs, which can make the kind of smaller displays used for AR devices.

The Ars Technica report said that almost everyone buys their organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) from Samsung, though Micro LEDs are expected to grow in popularity and there’s no real leader in that field yet.

Apple has been investing in the tech for a while and bought a startup based around it in 2014. And Meta is partnering with a company called Plessey to make Micro LEDs. Samsung is reportedly showing interest, too.

Google reportedly has new job listings for an “Augmented Reality OS” that says it will reach billions of people, along with a “Project Iris” AR headset. The company has also bought another company called North, which has made AR glasses.

The report said comparing Google’s AR gear to other VR efforts is “fair” because VR was spearheaded by the same team with leader Clay Bavor. Bavor is now the vice president of the Google Labs division.

PYMNTS wrote that Google has been looking into last-mile delivery, rolling out an integrated suite of mapping, routing and analytics capabilities working to assist fleet operators.

Read more: Google Launches Integrated Last Mile Fleet Solution

The report notes that this Last Mile Fleet solution optimizes “every stage” of the delivery journey, including capturing valid addresses and mapping out routes, and also tracking shipments and analyzing fleet performances.

The infrastructure is scalable and offers predictable pricing, and it will complement Google’s On-demand Rides & Deliveries tool, used by numerous companies.

“Every year, millions of packages go undelivered or missing, often due to a wrong address being entered or consumers not being home to receive them. These delivery failures are frustrating for consumers and costly for fleet operators,” Shalin Mantri, group product manager, Google Maps Platform, said in the announcement.