After Completing Intel Spinoff, RealSense Announces $50M Raise

RealSense is officially its own company, as the computer vision firm completes a spin out from Intel. The move comes a little over a decade after the chip giant launched the division to explore vision-based depth monitoring as subject tracking.

The news arrives with a fresh $50 million in funding for the company, with contributions from Intel Capital and fellow chipmaker, MediaTek. The newly-independent company will continue to operate in core categories, including computer vision, biometrics, AI, and robotics.

RealSense, which currently employees a headcount of around 130, was spun off as Intel has undergone round after round of layoffs. Intel Capital, the $5 billion venture group backing the new Series A, was also spun off earlier this year. That news arrived not long after the CEO Pat Gelsinger stepped down running the company four years into his tenure.

As Intel ceded key categories like smartphones to competitors including San Diego’s Qualcomm, RealSense represented an investment in the future. The division’s stereoscopic cameras quickly became a popular choice, for a robotics category rapidly expanding its footprint in warehouses, factories, and beyond.

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Intel VP and General manager, Nadav Orbach, is stepping in as CEO of the freshly minted company. The executive is banking the push toward embodied AI to buoy RealSense’s efforts. NVIDIA has since become a force in the robotics world, by way of its Jetson platform and other initiative targeting emerging markets like humanoids. Even so, at the rate automation is expanding, there’s likely plenty of room for competitors.

“The timing is now for physical AI,” as the technology gains more use cases and traction, Orbach said in a recent interview. “We want to develop new product lines. We see the demand and we see the need, and with where it’s at right now, the right thing for us was to raise external funds.”

As far as Intel's robotics ambitions beyond RealSense, it seems most likely the chip giant is focusing on getting its house in order before taking on new projects.