In August 2021, even before its major rounds of layoffs, Intel announced that it was closing its RealSense 3D depth camera division based on its acquisition of several Israeli startups, and in which most of its employees were in Israel. Some employees were laid off but the activity was not shut down but kept on a back burner for several years.
Last Friday the "Robot Report" website reported that Intel had been nurturing RealSense which is now being spun off as a standalone startup, with the aim of realizing its shares in the future.
Estimates are that the new company RealSense will have 100 employees, most of them in Israel. The shares in the company will be held by Intel Capital, Intel's venture capital fund, which is a subsidiary of the chip giant. RealSense's CEO is Nadav Orbach, currently VP and GM Incubation & Disruptive Innovation at Intel and the founder of the company's computerized vision activity, while RealSense founder Mark Yahiro, also a VP and GM at Intel, will be responsible for business development.
The RealSense Division is based on Intel's acquisition of Israeli companies Omek Interactive and Invision Biometrics, more than a decade ago when depth vision and 3D cameras were a hot trend in Silicon Valley. Those were the years when the tech giants competed in the development of reality glasses and Apple also acquired PrimeSense in Israel, which currently serves as the basis for facial recognition on iPhones.
RealSense began with the development of depth vision and perceptual computing, and in 2021 it was asked to focus on the robotics industry and temporarily stopped developing new facial recognition cameras, but only in recent years due to market demand. RealSense will continue to develop depth cameras for autonomous and non-autonomous robots, facial verification cameras, and unique cameras for the field of physiotherapy. The company intends to develop additional systems for the field of robotics such as stereo vision, biometrics and artificial intelligence.
Intel spun off the Israeli company Mobileye after acquiring it, and even helped it re-list on the New York Stock Exchange in October 2022 at a valuation of $16 billion. The chip giant has a history of "regretting" acquisition of companies and attempting to sell them. For example, in 2006 it sold Israeli company DSPC to Marvell Technologies for $600 million, after previously acquiring it for $1.6 billion.
Not all Intel's Israeli acquisitions have had such good fortune. Towards the end of 2024, as part of its reorganization process, Intel was forced to close Granulate, the Israeli cloud technology company it had acquired in 2022 for $650 million, after it could not find a buyer. However, the spin-off of RealSense is proof that Intel can get a company that is not active in its core areas off its hands without closing it, allowing it to take its chances on the open market.
Intel confirmed the story to "Globes" and said, "After ten years of development and nurturing within Intel, the time has come to unleash the full potential of Intel RealSense technology for computer vision and artificial intelligence. The technology will launch independently as a separate company as part of the Intel Capital Investment Portfolio (ICAP) during the first half of 2025. It is important for us to emphasize that we are committed to a smooth transition for all of our customers, and we will continue to provide them with the full support they need throughout the process."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 12, 2025.
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