UploadVR interviewed Meron Gribetz, the founder of Meta Company, and heard his explanation of what happened to the startup as it ran out of money.
I spoke by phone this week with Meron Gribetz, the founder of Meta Company and its AR ambitions, and heard his explanation of what happened to the startup as it ran out of money over the last nine months.
In case you are unfamiliar, Meta raised around $75 million, according to Crunchbase, with its largest $50 million Series B round announced a few months after Gribetz appeared in a TED talk in 2016 promoting the company’s Meta 2 AR headset and his concepts around human-computer interfaces.
Here’s how that TED talk came together, according to Stuart McFaul, the same marketing representative who worked with Gribetz to arrange a call with me this week:
Last year, it became apparent Meta was in trouble after a long period of silence.
Bloomberg reported in September that Gribetz furloughed employees after, he said, “The Chinese government sent an official request to our lead investor to re-evaluate the deal based on the recent actions from the Trump administration.”
Gribetz was unable to raise more money and a letter submitted last week in a patent infringement suit against the company revealed “Meta Company is insolvent.”
“The final step was that the bank which held our secured debt called the loan and sold the assets in a UCC sale to a private investor that I told you doesn’t want to be named right now,” Gribetz said on the call.
At its peak, Meta Company employed somewhere around 130 to 150 people, according to Gribetz. He declined to reveal key information including who bought the company, when the buyer might be revealed or how many Meta 2 headsets have been sold.
He did, however, answer some other questions.
Below is a transcript of the first section of my talk with Gribetz by phone. To save you time, though, I’ve also bolded the comments I found most interesting.
Meron Gribetz: Can you hear me?
UploadVR: Yeah I can hear you.
Gribetz. OK. Perfect. Thank you. Alright. So. I’m at your disposal, let me know, you know, what answers I can [get] for you, you have a lot of questions on your mind, and let’s just jump right into it.
Stuart McFaul: Well do you want to frame out the news for him first, or?
Gribetz: Yeah. Absolutely. So, look the tagline that I think summarizes the whole story is the simple statement which is that, Meta has new owners basically. Meta has been sold to new owners. And its assets are safe and have a future of some sort, so that’s kind of the bird’s eye summary and with that in mind I can jump into exactly, you know, what happened, and you can also guide me with questions as to what you wanna hear about in particular.
