Sources: North, the Canada-based maker of AR glasses that raised about $170M from Intel, Amazon, and others, is looking for a buyer as it runs low on cash
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg : Tweets: @sarahfrier and @sarahfrier Tweets: Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : After our scoop last week that Magic Leap was looking for a buyer, sources pointed us to another wearables company running low on cash: North, the maker of AR glasses. Goldman Sachs is helping them pitch buyers: https://www.bloomberg.com/... Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : Again, it's a super tough time to be in experimental consumer hardware. You're dealing with high R&D costs and low margins already, new tariffs on top of that, and most recently, supply chain constraints with COVID-19.
Context & Ripple Effects
North's sale search is the second act in a wearables shakeout Bloomberg has been documenting: days after reporting that Magic Leap was shopping itself, Sarah Frier's sources point to North, which had already pulled its $999 Focals glasses from sale in December after just 14 months on the market while promising a sleeker Focals 2.0. The company's pedigree makes the cash crunch starker — it raised about $170M from Intel and Amazon, and built its tech on the IP it bought from Intel's cancelled Vaunt glasses.
The deeper pattern is that Intel itself tried to exit smart glasses two years earlier, reportedly seeking up to $350M for a majority stake in its AR unit. Now the startup that absorbed that technology needs an exit of its own, with Goldman Sachs pitching buyers amid tariffs, thin margins, and COVID-19 supply chain constraints.
First-order effects
- North's investors — Intel and Amazon among them — are looking at a distressed outcome on their ~$170M, with Goldman Sachs running a process to find a buyer before the cash runs out.
- North's planned Focals 2.0 launch, promised when it halted first-generation sales in December, is effectively hostage to the sale: a buyer decides whether any product ships.
Second-order effects
- Strategic acquirers get leverage: with Magic Leap also seeking a buyer, deep-pocketed tech companies can shop both wearables teams at once and buy talent and IP near liquidation prices instead of funding them as competitors.
- Other consumer AR hardware startups face a repricing — if a company with Intel and Amazon backing and shipped product can't raise, later-stage wearable bets lose their comparable valuations.
Third-order effects
- Consumer AR is consolidating from venture-backed startups into big-tech labs, where glasses R&D survives as a strategic option funded by ad and cloud profits rather than as standalone businesses.
- If the pattern holds, experimental hardware exits become acqui-hires by default — the acquirer keeps the team and patents while winding down the commercial product line, as later reports of Alphabet closing in on North for roughly $180M while canceling Focals 2.0 suggest happened here.
The trend: Capital-intensive consumer AR hardware is migrating from independent startups to big-tech acquirers, with COVID-era supply shocks accelerating a consolidation that thin margins and high R&D costs had already set in motion.