Google acquires Raxium in augmented reality push

Google has acquired Raxium, a five-year-old Bay Area startup working on microLED display technologies for wearables and augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) headsets.

“Raxium’s technical expertise in this area will play a key role as we continue to invest in our hardware efforts,” Rick Osterloh, senior vice president of devices and services at Google, wrote in a blog post. The Raxium team will immediately join Google’s devices and services team.

The financial terms for the deal were undisclosed, but could be as much as $1 billion according to earlier reports by The Information.

Raxium is not the first AR company Google has targeted recently, having purchased the Canadian AR glasses firm North in 2020.

Google has also been hiring for an Augmented Reality OS team, focused on building software for an unknown “innovative AR device.”

The project is said to be overseen by Labs vice president Clay Bavor, who also manages Project Starline, a video chat booth that makes the person you’re chatting with appear in front of you in virtual reality.