Magic Leap Inc, a US start-up that makes a headset to project digital objects onto the real world, accused one of its former engineers of stealing its technology to create his own augmented-reality device for China.
In a lawsuit filed on Monday, Magic Leap alleges that Xu Chi (徐馳), who left in 2016, exploited its confidential information to “quickly develop a prototype of lightweight, ergonomically designed, mixed reality glasses for use with smartphones and other devices that are strikingly similar” to the Florida-based start-up’s designs.
The lawsuit marks the latest accusation from a US firm of intellectual property theft by Chinese companies, a perennial sore point that has helped escalate tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
With more than US$2 billion in financing, Magic Leap is one of the better-funded startups delving into so-called augmented or mixed reality, a technology that gives users the illusion that fantastical, three-dimensional digital objects exist in the physical world.
Xu, who founded Beijing-based Hangzhou Tairuo Technology Co (杭州太若科技), also known as Nreal, unveiled his own augmented-reality glasses at a major Las Vegas trade show in January, touting them as lighter than the Magic Leap One, Forbes has reported.
Apart from Magic Leap, Facebook Inc, Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc’s Google are also developing products for virtual or augmented reality. It remains to be seen whether anyone can turn the area into a big money-spinner.
Magic Leap released its headset in August last year after seven years of secretive work and more than US$2 billion of investment.
The start-up alleges that Xu plotted during his roughly 13 months working there to launch his own competing company in China and “neglected his work duties” to acquire proprietary information.
“Whereas Nreal purported to develop its Nreal Light product in under two years, Magic Leap developed its technology after extensive investment of time (multiple years), money (hundreds of millions of dollars spent on research and development) and human resources (hundreds of engineers),” according to the complaint.
Xu is accused in the suit of breach of contract, fraud and unfair competition. Nreal is also named as a defendant.
Representatives at Nreal had no immediate comment on the lawsuit, while Xu did not respond to a message sent to his LinkedIn account.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
AT HIGH CAPACITY: Three-month order visibility on stable customer demand would push factory utilization to between 80 and 85 percent, Vanguard’s president said Foundry service provider Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) yesterday said it is unable to fully satisfy surging demand for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) servers and data centers, amid an AI infrastructure investment boom that is crowding out production of less advanced chips. Vanguard is facing an “undersupply of chips” made using mature process technologies, due to strong demand for AI products and improving demand from customers in the commercial, industrial and auto sectors, which are digesting excess inventory to a healthier level, company chairman Fang Leuh (方略) told a virtual investors’ conference. However, Vanguard gave a more conservative view on
RSS