Google has decided to acquire a part of the XR business of the Taiwanese company HTC for $250 million.
As part of the agreement, part of the HTC VIVE engineering staff will be transferred to Google, and intellectual property rights will be granted. At the same time, HTC will retain the ability to use and develop this technology.
Google noted that this acquisition will help to speed up the development of the Android XR platform for headsets and glasses. This move is part of the competition between tech giants for leadership in XR technologies, where Apple and Meta continue to hold leading positions in the virtual reality market.
By the way, this is the second major deal between the companies after Google bought HTC's mobile division for $1.1 billion in 2017.