And Bristol Start developing hand tracking technology Similar to what we saw in Tom Cruise’s sci-fi movie, Minority Report is facing a debt crisis after taking millions in taxpayer funding.
Ultraleap, which has received funding from British Patient Capital, is seeking a fresh cash injection and is considering splitting up its business after breaching its banking covenants.
The startup admitted it breached the terms of the loan, worth more than £15 million, although it insisted the lender had “indicated its support” for its efforts to raise new funding.
The company, which spun out of the University of Bristol and has raised more than £100m, is developing a hand-tracking controller for use with virtual reality headsets and non-touch screens. It eliminates the need for a traditional gaming console or phone.
Its technology is similar to that seen in the 2002 film Minority Report, in which a police officer, played by Cruise, uses gestures to control a hands-free supercomputer.
However, consumer demand for virtual and augmented reality technology has been weak, even after tech giants such as… Apple and Meta launched the headphones Designed to immerse users in digital worlds.
In accounts published this month, Ultraleap admitted the market “continued to decline through 2024”, leading to cost cuts. It said it had raised convertible bonds, a form of debt, worth £9.75 million in the first half of last year.
The company lost £27m in the year to December 2023, according to accounts, up from £23.6m the previous year. Its revenues were almost flat at £4.2m.
Ultraleap, formerly called Ultrahaptics, has received financial backing from investors including Chinese company Tencent, London-listed IP Group and the now-defunct Woodford Equity Income Fund.
It also secured millions of pounds from government-backed investor British Patient Capital, through its company Future Fund: Breakout Chart.
When raising £60m in 2021, Tom Carter, CEO of Ultraleap, praised its potential in “metaverse” technologies as the company sought to “eliminate the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds”.
Since then, major technology companies have discontinued the concept of “transformation,” a type of 3D digital world that includes virtual reality and social media.
Despite Apple’s investment of tens of billions of dollars in its Vision Pro and Meta headsets for its Quest products, its VR and AR products remain niche.
Global sales hovered around 9.6 million units in 2024, according to data from Trendforce, up 8.8% year-on-year. Data from IDC, cited by Ultraleap, said there was a 67% drop in shipments in the first three months of 2024 alone.
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