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Meta announced Quest 3, a sequel to the bestselling VR headset of all time, on Wednesday.

The device, starting at $499, is more expensive than its predecessor by $200, but it includes a more powerful chip from Qualcomm, better screens and an ability called “passthrough” which is expected to be one of the key features on Apple’s competing Vision Pro headset.

Preorders open on Wednesday and it ships on Oct. 10.

The defining feature of the Quest 3 headset is the ability to quickly see the world outside the headset, which will make the device less isolating and thus more comfortable to use for long periods. When in an app on the Quest 3, double-tapping any part of the headset brings you out of a virtual world and into “passthrough” mode.

Other improvements include “pancake lenses,” a kind of optic first used on Meta’s $1,499 Quest Pro that make images sharper and allows for higher resolution.

The release of Meta’s latest VR headset comes as a battle looms with Apple in virtual reality. Many in the technology industry believe Apple’s entrance could expand the total market and create new winners, similar to how the iPhone jump-started the smartphone market.

So far Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has a head start. Its Quest 2 is by far the bestselling VR headset, with nearly 10 million units sold last year, slightly down from a pandemic peak, according to an industry estimate. Apple’s Vision Pro headset won’t go on sale until next year, and costs significantly more than Meta’s headsets, starting at $3,499.

But despite Meta’s current success in sales, it’s not clear just how many Quest 2 owners use it on a daily or weekly basis, and the killer app or must-have scenario for VR remains elusive. Meta has invested over $21 billion to date in its Reality Labs division, which develops headsets and VR software.

Passthrough

CNBC was able to try out the Quest 3 for about an hourlong demo ahead of its launch Wednesday that included game playing and being walked through a few programs that showed off the company’s hardware.

The hardware has been significantly updated, with a new headband strap and a slimmer headset shape. The headband splits the top strap into two to better distribute weight. The whole headset, though, is a hair heavier than its predecessor at 515 grams. The speakers on the device also have been improved, and provide a quality audio experience.

Meta has also updated the two necessary controllers with better haptic feedback. It uses Qualcomm‘s Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip, which is Arm-based and closer in power and energy drain to a mobile processor than a PC processor.

The extra power on the chip is used to power displays at 2,064 x 2,208 resolution per eye, higher than the Quest 2’s 1,832 x 1,920 resolution per eye. The additional pixels will make it easier to read text inside the headset. Users can expect about two hours and 12 minutes of battery life, Meta says.

During the demo, I tried out Samba de Amigo, a $30 game from Sega that is like Dance Dance Revolution or Rock Band with maracas (in real life, the Quest 3 controllers). I enjoyed it, and even sweated a little bit.

The biggest improvement to usability is that the Quest 3 emphasizes passthrough, which means the cameras outside the device can show live video on the displays inside the headset, working somewhat like a transparent pair of glasses that can also show computer windows and other graphics. The Quest 3 can also scan the room around you so apps can warn you when you’re about to bump into your surroundings.

Passthrough, while a core component of mixed-reality experiences which integrate computer graphics with the real world, for now is a nice-to-have usability feature. In practice, it means that users can stop their game or experience inside the Quest 3 without taking the headset off. During the demo, I was able to chat with Meta officials while wearing the headset, a major improvement over the last version.

Meta’s launch of the Quest 3 will be compared to Apple’s more expensive Vision Pro headset. But while Apple packed as much pricey technology into its headset as possible to enable its own passthrough mode it calls “spatial computing,” Meta is seeking to match many of its features, or at least an approximation of them, at a fraction of the price. Meta’s $1,499 Quest Pro is a lower-volume product.

But if there’s one major difference between Meta and Apple at this point, it’s that the former envisions the Quest mainly as a gaming device, while Apple frames its device as a computer. Meta says it’s lined up 500 games and apps for the headset, including a Ghostbusters title, an Assassin’s Creed game, and a Stranger Things experience developed in conjunction with Netflix.

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Substack boosts video capabilities amid potential TikTok ban

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Substack boosts video capabilities amid potential TikTok ban

Rafael Henrique | SOPA Images | AP

After posting almost 200 videos, amassing hundreds of thousands of followers and racking up millions of views, Carla Lalli Music is quitting YouTube. Substack is her new focus. 

Music is a cookbook author and food content creator, and she is shifting her focus to Substack, a subscription platform that lets creators charge users subscriptions for access to their content. Music told CNBC she came to that decision after earning more in one year of using Substack, nearly $200,000 in revenue, than she did by posting videos on YouTube since 2021. 

Music is the exact kind of content creator that Substack is trying to lure to its platform as TikTok’s future in the U.S. remains in limbo. 

San Francisco-based Substack launched in 2017 as a tool for newsletter writers to charge readers a monthly fee to read their content. The platform allows creators to connect to their followers directly without having to navigate algorithmic models that control when their content is shown, as is the case on TikTok, Google’s YouTube and other social platforms. Substack has raised about $100 million, most recently at a post-money valuation of more than $650 million, the company told CNBC.

This year, Substack has broadened its focus beyond newsletters, and on Thursday, it announced that creators can now post video content directly through the Substack app and monetize these videos.

“There’s going to be a world of people who are much more focused on videos,” Substack Co-founder Hamish McKenzie told CNBC. “That is a huge world that Substack is only starting to penetrate.”

Substack began this push after the social media landscape was thrown into flux as a result of the effective ban of TikTok in January that caused the popular Chinese-owned service to go offline for a few hours. TikTok was also removed from Apple and Google’s app stores for nearly a month. 

The disruption to TikTok in January happened as a result of a law signed by former President Joe Biden to force a sale of the Chinese-owned app or have it effectively banned in the U.S. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order extending TikTok’s ability to operate in the U.S., but that order expires on April 5. 

Days after TikTok went offline, Substack launched a $20 million fund to court creators to its platform.

“If TikTok gets banned for political reasons, there’s nothing to do with the work you’ve done, but it really affects your life,” McKenzie said. “The only and surefire guard against that is if you don’t place your audience in the hands of some other volatile system who doesn’t care about what happens to your livelihood.”

Moving beyond newsletters

McKenzie says that they are going after creators on competing social media platforms to start sharing their video content on Substack.

“Video-first creators, people who are mobile oriented, there’s a whole lot of new possibility waiting to be unlocked once they meet this model in the right place,” McKenzie said. 

Already, Substack has more than 4 million paid subscriptions with over 50,000 creators who make money on the platform, the company said. Substack says that 82% of its top 250 revenue-generating creators have already integrated audio or video into their content, reflecting a growing emphasis on multimedia content.

Prior to the video announcements, Substack allowed creators to post videos on the app to Notes, which is the platform’s front-facing feed format. But the feature did not allow creators to publish video content behind Substack’s paywalls. 

The update enables creators to put video content behind a paywall and it provides data on estimated revenue impact. It also allows them to track viewership and new subscribers.

Carla Lalli Music is a cookbook writer and food creator.

Carla Lalli Music

Our base case for TikTok is that it gets banned in the U.S.: Lead Edge Capital's Mitchell Green

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Anne Wojcicki has a new offer to take 23andMe private, this time for $74.7 million

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Anne Wojcicki has a new offer to take 23andMe private, this time for .7 million

Anne Wojcicki attends the WSJ Magazine Style & Tech Dinner in Atherton, California, on March 15, 2023.

Kelly Sullivan | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital have submitted a proposal to take the embattled genetic testing company private, according to a Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Wojcicki and New Mountain have offered to acquire all of 23andMe’s outstanding shares in cash for $2.53 per share, or an equity value of approximately $74.7 million. The company’s stock closed at $2.42 on Friday with a market cap of about $65 million.

The offer comes after a turbulent year for 23andMe, with the stock losing more than 80% of its value in 2024. In January, the company announced plans to explore strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or its assets, a restructuring or a business combination. 

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23andMe has a special committee of independent directors in place to evaluate potential paths forward. The company appointed three new independent directors to its board in October after all seven of its previous directors abruptly resigned the prior month. The special committee has to approve Wojcicki and New Mountain’s proposal.

“We believe that our Proposal provides compelling value and immediate liquidity to the Company’s public stockholders,” Wojcicki and Matthew Holt, managing director and president of private equity at New Mountain, wrote in a letter to the special committee on Thursday.

Wojcicki previously submitted a proposal to take the company private for 40 cents per share in July, but it was rejected by the special committee, in part because the members said it lacked committed financing and did not provide a premium to the closing price at the time.

Wojcicki and New Mountain are willing to provide secured debt financing to fund 23andMe’s operations through the transaction’s closing, the filing said. New Mountain is based in New York and has $55 billion of assets under management, according to its website.

23andMe declined to comment.

WATCH: The rise and fall of 23andMe

The rise and fall of 23andMe

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Shares of Hims & Hers tumble 23% after FDA says semaglutide is no longer in shortage

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Shares of Hims & Hers tumble 23% after FDA says semaglutide is no longer in shortage

Hims & Hers

Shares of Hims & Hers Health tumbled more than 23% on Friday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that the shortage of semaglutide injection products has been resolved.

Semaglutide is the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic. Those medications are part of a class of drugs called GLP-1s, and demand for the treatments has exploded in recent years. As a result, digital health companies such as Hims & Hers have been prescribing compounded semaglutide as an alternative for patients who are navigating volatile supply hurdles and insurance obstacles.

Compounded drugs are custom-made alternatives to brand-name drugs designed to meet a specific patient’s needs, and compounders are allowed to produce them when brand-name treatments are in shortage. The FDA doesn’t review the safety and efficacy of compounded products.

Hims & Hers began offering compounded semaglutide to patients in May, and it owns compounding pharmacies that produce the medications.

Compounded medications are typically much cheaper than their branded counterparts. Hims & Hers sells compounded semaglutide for less than $200 per month, while Ozempic and Wegovy both cost around $1,000 per month without insurance.

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The FDA said Friday that it will start taking action against compounders for violations in the next 60 to 90 days, depending on the type of facility, in order to “avoid unnecessary disruption to patient treatment.”

“Now that the FDA has determined the drug shortage for semaglutide has been resolved, we will continue to offer access to personalized treatments as allowed by law to meet patient needs,” Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum posted Friday on X. “We’re also closely monitoring potential future shortages, as Novo Nordisk stated two weeks ago that it would continue to have ‘capacity limitations’ and ‘expected continued periodic supply constraints and related drug shortage notifications.'”

Him & Hers’ weight loss offerings have been a massive hit with investors. Shares of the company climbed more than 200% last year, and the stock is already up more than 100% this year despite Friday’s move.

Even before it added compounded GLP-1s to its portfolio, the company said in its 2023 fourth-quarter earnings call that it expects its weight loss program to bring in more than $100 million in revenue by the end of 2025.

Despite the turbulent regulatory landscape, Hims & Hers has showed no signs of slowing down.

On Friday, the company announced it has acquired a U.S.-based peptide facility that will “further verticalize the company’s long-term ability to deliver personalized medications.” Hims & Hers will explore advances across metabolic optimization, recovery science, biological resistances, cognitive performance and preventative health through the acquisition, the company said.

That move comes just days after Hims & Hers also bought Trybe Labs, the New Jersey-based at-home lab testing facility. Trybe Labs will allow Hims & Hers to perform at-home blood draws and more comprehensive pretreatment testing.

Hims & Hers did not disclose the terms of either deal.

WATCH: Hims & Hers Super Bowl ad sparks controversy

Hims & Hers Super Bowl ad sparks controversy

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