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Google Takes 6.3% Stake In Google Glass Tech Supplier Himax Display As It Preps To Ramp Up Production
Shares of semiconductor maker Himax Technologies are jumping in pre-market trading with the news that Google has taken a 6.3% stake in Himax Display (HDI). HDI is a subsidiary of the Taiwanese company that focuses on liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) chips and modules, which are used in Google Glass and other products. HDI also counts Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures and Intel as investors.
Google’s stake is a sign that Glass production is ramping up: the company says that the invesmtment is being made to “fund production upgrades, expand capacity and further enhance production capabilities.”
It’s not clear what the valuation of HDI or Google’s stake are. We have contacted Jackie Chang, the CFO of Himax, to see if we can find out (we’ll update when we know more). Himax Technologies itself, which trades on NASDAQ, has a current market cap of $876.7 million. Shares closed down on Friday at $5.17 (down 3.36%) but are trading nearly 40% higher before the market opens so will likely see a pop today.
What’s more clear is that this is a sign that growing interest in Google Glass and other products like it are putting some pressure on Himax, which has been around since 2004, to increase production facilities.
As Google makes more moves into positioning itself as a vertically-integrated tech player beyond software and cloud-based services, the company’s stake in HDI could grow. Himax says that the 6.3% stake includes an option to make an addition investment in more preferred shares within the next year. If exercised in full, Google can take up to a 14.8% share in HDI.
“Google is a preeminent global technology leader. We are delighted to receive this investment and to form a strategic partnership with Google,” said Jordan Wu, president and CEO of Himax, in a statement. “Beginning the second quarter of this year, we had already begun expanding capacity to meet demand for our LCOS product line. This investment from Google further validates our commitment to developing breakthrough technologies and state‐of‐the‐art production facilities. We look forward to leveraging this investment and our collective expertise withGoogle to create unique and transformational LCOS technologies for many years ahead.”
As part of the deal, Himax, which now owns 81.5% of the subsidiary, says it will also be investing money to expand production at HDI. Google’s share acquisition is expected to close in Q3 2013.
Expect Labs Nabs IDG And Liberty Global As Strategic Investors, Says iPad App Launch Is In The Works
The Expect Labs team has been awfully busy these past few months — the San Francisco startup has already locked up investment deals with major players in the mobile and hardware realms, and now the company has announced that IDG and Liberty Global have become its latest strategic investors.
Quick recap of Expect Labs’ mission: it’s working on what it calls the Anticipatory Computing Engine, a system that quietly listens in on your conversations to figure out what you’re talking about and surfaces what it thinks you may need before you even ask for it. If Expect Labs CEO Tim Tuttle has his way, the ACE will find itself embedded in a slew of devices and services all around you, waiting to dish out data at a moment’s notice.
As usual, Tuttle wouldn’t disclose the details of Liberty Global and IDG’s investment, but it’s said to be larger than the startup’s $2.4 million seed round. So far the company has received strategic investments from the likes of Samsung, Intel, and Telefonica, and it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine how a mobile phone titan, a chipmaker, and a wireless carrier could potentially implement a system like this.
IDG is a little more peculiar though in that it’s largely a media and events business — how exactly could they benefit from a system like that. Though IDG hasn’t yet asked Expect Labs to build anything for them, Tuttle expects that the company’s potential uses of the anticipatory computing system will relate to distance learning and online seminars. That education angle is definitely a compelling one, if only because the ACE aims to provide contextually-sensitive information as a discussion unfolds, and Tuttle says it wouldn’t be a huge stretch for the system to serve up data related to lecture materials in real time.
Liberty Global on the other hand isn’t a very well-known quantity around these parts, but the cable company sports a substantial subscriber base in Europe and South America and Tuttle says its interest in anticipatory computing ties into a larger vision of a connected home. We’ve seen more than few cable companies branch out into that space already — Comcast and Time Warner Cable dabble in home automation to name a few — but as the number of connected devices in our homes continues to grow, Tuttle says adding natural language interface is a logical next step in making them smarter.
“Picture those sci-fi movies from the 50s where people talk to their appliances,” Tuttle added. “That’s the same picture that these companies are looking at.”
But Expect Labs has its share of issues to tackle, and perhaps the largest it faces at this point is getting the ACE ready for the world at large. The ACE is no polyglot right now — the alpha version that the startup’s partners have been playing with for the past few months can only parse English, but Expect Labs has received strategic investments from multiple foreign companies that have either expressed interest in using the ACE or have already begun testing it. If the team wants to fulfill its (admittedly lofty) vision, the ACE needs to handle a multitude of languages and get a grip on the sorts of information people in those markets will be asking for.
“If you ask it about politicians or restaurants in Japan it’s not so great,” Tuttle said. “But if you ask it about the All-Star game or restaurants in San Francisco, it does considerably better.”
And of course, there’s the eventual consumer launch to fret over. Last time I spoke to Tuttle, he seemed a little crestfallen because the widespread release of the impressive MindMeld iPad the team showed off at our Disrupt SF Battlefield had to be put on the back-burner due to increased interest from its would-be partners. Now that the young company’s coffers are swelling, it’s working to flesh out its team to better support its existing partners and a forthcoming influx of regular consumers taking the iPad app for a spin — Tuttle says they should be ready to go by the end of the year.
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