Mayo Clinic Backs Healium, Pico’s VR Layoffs, Roblox Stock Pops

Disappointing sales of Pico’s well-reviewed VR headset caused Byte Dance to lay off staff. The company is reportedly planning to lay-off a third of its VR staff just months after Byte Dance (which also owns TikTok) launched the Pico 4 stand-alone VR headset. The meager marketing effort behind the headset yielded predictably disappointing results. ByteDance acquired the headset maker in 2021, hoping to do to Meta’s VR business what it has done to its social media platforms.

Healium Lands $3.6 M Seed Funding At the same time the company announced a strategic investment by the Mayo Clinic with the KCRise Fund and the Missouri Technology Corporation. Healium’s technology uses generative AI to create customized immersive content in real-time based on a user’s biofeedback. Also investing in Healium’s new seed round are Ambition Fund II, Captain Partners & Astronaut Holdings, Citrine Angels, Coact Capital, Gaingels, Impact Venture Capital, QRM Capital, Stadia Ventures, Tidewater Capital, and Underdog Ventures.

In a boost for the ‘metaverse,’ Roblox stock pops 25% after strong Q4 earnings. Despite the putative Metaverse being deposed as the topic de jour by AI, Metaverse poster child Roblox reported it has 58.8 million average daily active users (DAUs), up 19% year-over-year. Roblox shares popped 25% on the good news.

Tencent scraps plans for its own VR hardware and is reportedly in talks with Meta to sell Quest VR headsets in China.

The PlayStation Goggles Are a Win for Gamers. Not for the Metaverse, declared the NY Times. “Sony’s new $550 headset offers best-in-class virtual reality gaming, but it’s still hard to see why we need VR goggles at all.” VR skeptics notwithstanding, the headset has been winning kudos, and some of its new titles showcase the graphic power of the new Playstation 5. Gran Turismo 7 VR might make you a PSVR 2 believer, says The Verge.

VR Studio Secret Location Shutters It was acquired by Canada’s Entertainment One (eOne), which itself was acquired by Hasbro for $4B in 2019. Hasbro had plans to build itself into an intellectual property powerhouse, like Disney. It didn’t take long for that idea to go south. Now everything associated with the old strategy is going overboard. Secret Location won a primetime Emmy for a VR project for its VR experience tied into the show “Sleepy Hollow.” Its other credits include the popular VR games Nerf Ultimate Championship, Blasters of the Universe, and the VR film “The Great C”. In a LinkedIn post, president and co-founder Ryan Andal said he is leaving the company.

Ryff Secures Pilot with Comcast After winning the LIFToff VideoAI Challenge. Ryff uses AI to find and replace assets in a video with product placements, such as a car, or a can of soda, or items on a kitchen counter in a sitcom. The LIFToff program, developed by Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs, identifies opportunities for partnerships between the company and startups on the verge of large-scale commercialization.

This Week in XR is also a podcast hosted by the author of this column, Ted Schilowitz, Futurist, Paramount Global, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Jay Samit, artist, author, and former Independent Vice-Chairman of Deloitte Digital. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.

What We’re Reading

What Does Generative AI Mean For Your Brand And What Does It Have To Do With The Future Of The Metaverse? (Cathy Hackl/Forbes)

The Next Hot Housing Market Is Out of This World. It’s in the Metaverse (Debra Kamin/NY Times)

When the Movies Pictured A.I., They Imagined the Wrong Disaster NY Times’ Film Critic A.O. Scott on the banality of sentience.

This Week in Schadenfreude

Meta Verified Shows a Company Running Out of Ideas (Wired)