Snapchat to Raise $1 Billion to Further Build Content, Gaming, and AR
Snap Inc, the company behind the ever popular Snapchat, plans to raise $1 billion in short-term debt to further develop the content, gaming, and AR features of its platform.
Reuters reports that Snap Inc, now publicly traded since 2017, plans to raise $1 billion in short-term debt by offering convertible senior notes that will mature in 2026, to be paid back in cash, stock, or a combination of both.
“We will continue to focus on developing our content, gaming, and augmented reality platforms to enhance the Snapchat experience for our community,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in a memo obtained by Reuters.
For now Snapchat’s AR functionality has been mostly limited to face filters, but the company has shown a willingness to experiment with wearables; in 2016 the company launched Spectacles, camera-equipped sunglasses which allow users to shoot photos from a first person perspective.
Coupled with its expanding smartphone-AR offering, which now includes ‘World Lenses’ which place AR content into the world instead of just on faces, Snapchat looks to be positioning itself to make the leap to the first viable consumer head-worn AR headset, if not aspiring to make such a device itself.
Facebook is in a similar position as it has software offerings which largely match those of Snapchat, however, Facebook has not hidden the fact that it’s definitely doing R&D in the AR hardware space.
Meanwhile, Apple certainly has something up their sleeves, while Google seems to not to be bullish on the AR hardware front but is letting the tech gestate by supporting smartphone AR features in the meantime.
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