- • AR headsets are about to get very affordable
- • How humans will live to 100… and beyond
- • The biggest car revolution since the Model T
Mass-market augmented reality is coming…
A private company called DigiLens recently announced the first augmented reality (AR) eyeglass displays made of plastic. Until now, AR lenses have been manufactured using more expensive materials like specialized glass and silicon.
Remember, AR glasses overlay digital images on top of your view of the real world. AR is on its way to becoming your new user interface for communications and information. Eventually, AR eyewear will replace smartphones… No more sore necks and tired wrists and fingers from being hunched over your smartphone.
This is an extraordinary breakthrough from DigiLens. Using plastics as the base for lens technology could potentially reduce the costs by 90%.
The lenses are the most expensive part of an AR headset. And the manufacturing processes of making lenses out of specialized glass or silicon are expensive. That’s why AR headsets have cost more than $1,000 up to this point.
But using plastic will dramatically reduce manufacturing costs… and bring AR headsets down to the price point of $250–$400. That’s the sweet spot for consumer electronics. Just think about what Apple did to the watch industry. Priced at $399, Apple outsold the entire Swiss watch industry by 2017 and became the most popular watch in the world.
So the work DigiLens is doing is fantastic. And the story gets even more interesting when you look at its backers.
Last month, the company raised $50 million in venture capital (VC). Among the investors were Samsung Venture Investment, Niantic, Universal Display, and Mitsubishi.
Samsung is the world’s largest smartphone maker. It sold 292 million smartphones worldwide last year. Its investment is likely a sign that Samsung intends to manufacturer a consumer-grade pair of AR glasses.
Niantic is the company that made Pokémon Go… which is the most successful AR app to date. In fact, the game has generated more than $2 billion in revenue since it launched in 2016.
Universal Display provides the technology that goes into OLED TVs and tablet screens.
And Mitsubishi sells the chemicals used to produce the plastic lenses.
So the fact that these companies are investing in DigiLens gives us great insight. Clearly, these industry leaders see big potential in AR: Samsung, an AR glasses manufacturer; Niantic, an AR application producer; Universal Display, a possible acquirer; and Mitsubishi, a supplier of raw materials for plastic lenses…
I have said before that AR will be the next mass-market consumer frenzy… And this brings us one step closer.
Obviously, that makes DigiLens a company for us to watch. Ultimately, its lenses could go into products made by tech giants like Samsung, Apple, and Facebook.
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A company leading the personalized medicine charge…
Just last week, a company called Tempus raised $200 million in venture capital. Tempus is a genomic testing and data analysis company founded by Eric Lefkofsky… who was also one of Groupon’s cofounders.
Tempus built a platform to collect and organize all kinds of clinical data. Then it structures the data so that it can be searched and analyzed.
I know that may sound boring… But it’s a huge need in the medical industry.
Right now, clinical data is dispersed on different systems that don’t talk to each other. That makes it nearly impossible to analyze.
Tempus solves that problem. And it goes a step further. It also sequences and analyzes patients’ DNA.
This allows Tempus to create customized treatments for patients… And it’s doing this at an impressive scale. That’s the key thing.
You see, everybody agrees that personalized medicine is better than one-size-fits-all treatments. But nobody has been able to do it at scale before… making it too expensive for the average person.
Tempus is changing that. By organizing medical data and sequencing patient DNA on a large scale, personalized medical treatments become cost affordable.
Ultimately, the days of reactionary medical treatment will be over. Instead of having your sickness treated only after symptoms have flared up, your genetic data will be analyzed ahead of time. Treatments will be administered proactively. You’ll be treated for a disease months or sometimes years before you become “sick.”
Human beings will live well into their 100s and beyond…
And if Tempus’ growth rate is any indication, that future is not that far off.
Tempus has been in business since 2015… And it’s now a $3.1 billion company with nearly 700 employees. That’s incredible. It’s gone from nothing to $3.1 billion in just over three years.
That tells us how big the personalized medicine trend is… and how fast it’s moving. Keep an eye on Tempus – it’s a company to watch, and we may have a chance to invest if it goes the route of an IPO.
Semiconductors are gunning for the auto industry…
German semiconductor company Infineon Technologies just bought Cypress Semiconductor for $10 billion. And the reason Infineon wanted Cypress is simple. It will enhance its ability to serve the auto industry. Much of Cypress’ business was focused on automotive applications.
The semiconductor industry is highly competitive. Unless you make highly specialized chips that can be sold at high gross margins, the only way to survive is through scale. There’s no other way.
That’s why semiconductor companies are going after the auto industry. The auto industry is a $2 trillion market globally… And it’s going through a revolution. The industry is shifting rapidly toward electric vehicles, and self-driving cars will be next.
That’s why this move from Infineon is important for you as an investor and a consumer. It tells us that the revolution in self-driving cars is quickly approaching. The semiconductor industry knows this.
And that means all cars on the road today will be replaced with self-driving cars over time. And, of course, self-driving cars contain more semiconductors than legacy models. That’s a massive opportunity.
Global semiconductor sales are projected to hit $490 billion this year… And nearly one-third of that will come from the auto industry.
That’s why the industry has been making moves. NXP Semiconductors bought Freescale for $11.6 billion in 2015… Intel bought Mobileye for $15.3 billion in 2017… Nvidia bought Mellanox for $6.9 billion this year… And now Infineon just bought Cypress.
It has all been to get ahead of the self-driving cars trend.
So don’t believe skeptics who tell you that self-driving cars are likely decades away. These industry giants wouldn’t be making these types of acquisitions if that was the case.
In a few years’ time, the next car you buy will drive itself off the lot.
Regards,
Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge
P.S. If you haven’t already, please be sure to reserve your spot for next week’s free technology investing summit…
On Wednesday, June 12, at 8 p.m. ET, I’ll be inviting The Bleeding Edge readers to join me, online, as I reveal my top four predictions for the technology of the future. I’ll also tell you about the companies at the heart of these predictions and show how smart investors could likely make 10 times their money.
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