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CTV News
41 minutes ago
- CTV News
Tech promised virtual reality would revolutionize entertainment. That moment might finally be closer than we think
A woman plays a video game with the Oculus Rift VR headset at a video arcade dedicated to virtual reality in Paris, France. (Benoit Tessier/Reuters via CNN Newsource) Virtual reality was supposed to transform entertainment. At least, that was the expectation roughly a decade ago with the arrival of the Oculus Rift, the first virtual reality (VR) headset that many believed would push VR into the mainstream. In 2025, the industry has failed to deliver on that promise. But tech and entertainment giants alike believe that moment could be closer than ever. The evidence is there. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Meta is in talks with Disney, A24 and other entertainment companies to produce immersive content for its Quest VR headsets. Apple announced an update to its Vision Pro headset in June, enabling users to share content with other headsets — ideal for watching movies together in 3-D. Earlier this year, Apple also launched an immersive Metallica concert for the Vision Pro and announced in July it's readying its first upgrade to boost the Vision Pro's performance. Taken together, this signals that tech and media behemoths are still betting that consumers will be willing to spend hundreds, if not thousands, to experience concerts, movies and sporting events beyond the confines of a traditional screen. A chicken-and-the-egg paradox In the 10-plus years since Oculus debuted the Rift, headset manufacturers have produced lighter, more powerful devices. Meanwhile, companies are finally warming to the idea of another medium for storytelling. Tech companies have a history of flirting with VR projects aimed at mainstream users. In June, Meta offered live virtual rinkside tickets to Stanley Cup games, echoing previous NBA and WNBA offerings. Headset owners have attended virtual concerts for years, including Apple's immersive Alicia Keys session and Meta's Blackpink show. Disney even launched a Disney+ app for Apple's Vision Pro on Day 1 in 2024. But these have been pilots to gauge interest, not long-term investments. Historically, headsets have been trapped in a chicken-and-egg paradox: to woo entertainment content, they need mass adoption; but to reach that scale, headsets need premium content. The technology must also be comfortable, powerful and popular enough to gain mass appeal. For Sarah Malkin, director of entertainment content for Meta's VR division Reality Labs, that cycle is already being broken. 'I think the 'it moment' is when you are regularly engaging in experiences in mixed reality that are super complementary and part of your integrated life,' Malkin told CNN. 'To me, that's already happening.' Global shipments of augmented reality (AR) and VR headsets increased by around 10 per cent in 2024 to 7.5 million and nearly 30.8 per cent to 3.4 million in the US, according to IDC, a global market intelligence and data company. Although IDC predicts shipments around the world will tumble this year due to delayed product launches, it expects a massive rebound in 2026 with worldwide shipments surging 98.5 per cent to 11.3 million. However, the results haven't always lived up to the hype. Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse has cost Meta US$46 billion over three years. Reality Labs, the company's VR division, posted $4.2 billion in operating loss and just $412 million in sales in Q1, down from the previous quarter. But tech giants continue to experiment with the technology. Meta invested $3.5 billion in eyewear manufacturer EssilorLuxottica SA to bolster its AI spectacle gambit, according to Bloomberg. (A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the report.) Snap recently said it plans to launch new augmented reality spectacles next year, and Google continues to work with partners like Xreal and Samsung on upcoming headsets and glasses that run on its new Android XR software. Samsung will be among the first to launch such a device with its upcoming Project Moohan headset. With more sophisticated hardware and a budding content portfolio, Bertrand Nepveu, a former Vision Pro contributor and partner at Triptyq Capital, said wider adoption is crucial. 'It's still early, but there's no technical limitation right now, it's more (that) we need people to invest because you need a critical mass,' Nepveu told CNN. Samsung's Project Moohan Attendees photograph Samsung's Project Moohan mixed-reality headsets with Google at the Galaxy Unpacked event in San Jose, California, on Jan. 22. (Michaela Vatcheva/Bloomberg/Getty Images via CNN Newsource) A paradigm shift in content Although big names like James Cameron and Sabrina Carpenter are already beginning to explore VR, immersive storytelling has yet to gain that crucial widespread popularity. Slow growth can be partially attributed to incorrect assumptions by studios. 'You can't just take the flat version of what you put on Disney+ or Netflix or Amazon, and just throw that up,' Jenna Seiden, an industry consultant and adviser who has worked with Skydance Media, Niantic, CAA, and Xbox, told CNN. 'You need to build natively so the audience is going to have a different experience per platform.' While creating media for virtual and mixed reality may seem like a departure from developing content for 2-D screens, Seiden says the secret to success is a tactic media companies are already familiar with: exclusivity. 'You look at the creation of HBO (Max), you look at the creation of Apple TV+, they grew their audiences based on exclusives, that's why you went to them,' Seiden said. 'I think that model is very familiar to entertainment companies, and they can go to their board saying, 'Hey, this is how platforms grow, with exclusive content.'' That's what makes live virtual sports an easy way to break down extended reality (XR) barriers for audiences. Paul Raphaël, co-founder of Felix & Paul, said sports can be easily adapted for immersive platforms using 180-degree cameras. 'You already have quite a few events and sports being broadcast, whether it's live or asynchronous,' Raphaël said. 'As the audience grows, it's a really straightforward path to create the content or to broadcast the content.' For Hollywood, the possibility of a new major distribution platform couldn't come at a better time. In today's fracturing media environment — shaken by streaming, the collapse of the cable bundle, and post-Covid box office woes — a new medium could be a crucial selling point, especially for entertainment boards looking for a new revenue vein. Jack Davis, co-founder of CryptTV, said headsets might provide a much-needed pipeline for premium content. 'As gigantic structural changes happen in TV and film, the industry is going to need to replace those things in the aggregate,' Davis said. 'This could be one of the only formats that premium entertainment actually seems like it makes sense (for) the user base.' Budgetary and content hurdles Over the past decade, investment in VR has been eclipsed by more pressing innovations, including self-driving cars and AI. Although it's difficult to determine how that has directly impacted XR investment, funding data from Crunchbase, a predictive company intelligence solution, shows that backing for AI and self-driving has steadily increased, rising from $39.96 billion in 2019 to $105.36 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, XR funding has experienced more erratic behavior — reaching a peak of $4.087 billion in 2021 but dropping to $347.69 million by 2025. Things were much the same in the venture capital world, where the number of global VR deals has also dropped in recent years. PitchBook, which examines private equity and VC deals, notes that 2019 was the largest year for VC deals in VR in the last decade, recording $6.43 billion in deals worldwide. That was significantly smaller than the $57.084 billion from AI-focused venture capitalists that year. In 2025, VR VCs have fallen to only $3.61 billion in global deals while AI VCs have grown to $130.89 billion. But Nepveu said that's changing. 'Now that AI is more understood, you know what it's good for, what it's not capable of, the budgets now are going back into XR,' Nepveu claimed. Still, tech giants investing in the development of mixed reality headsets face a daunting challenge that extends beyond the entertainment available. They need to convince consumers that the devices are both worth paying for and putting on their faces. That's partially why Apple emphasized the Vision Pro as a spatial computing tool, focusing on work and productivity rather than just 2-D and 3-D entertainment capabilities. Still, even a decade later, experts can't seem to agree on exactly when VR will have its breakout moment. Nepveu said it could happen any day. Raphaël expected one or two years. Davis suggested three to seven. Seiden said five to 10. Raphaël, however, believes 2-D content may soon feel as dated as pre-Technicolor entertainment. 'Content, the way it is consumed today, is going to be much like we think of black and white movies, where, if a film isn't immersive, it doesn't lose its value, but it becomes something of another era,' Raphaël said. By Liam Reilly.
Globe and Mail
3 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
3 Millionaire-Maker Quantum Computing Stocks
Key Points Alphabet and Microsoft have vast resources to invest in quantum computing. IonQ's approach to quantum computing is unique. 10 stocks we like better than IonQ › Quantum computing is one of the hottest trends in the market. It's an innovative technology that's starting to gain wider adoption, but we're still a few years away from widespread commercial use. The trick with quantum computing investing is to get into the leaders before they take off, but not so early that the stocks are essentially dead money until the quantum computing arms race picks up steam. It's impossible to predict when that will occur, but I still believe some viable quantum computing investments will reward shareholders over the long term if they invest in them now. These are mostly big tech companies that are investing in quantum computing, but I also have one pure-play company that I'm keeping an eye on. Alphabet Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) kicked off the quantum computing arms race in December 2024 with the announcement of its Willow quantum computing chip. The chip completed a task in five minutes that would have taken the world's most powerful supercomputer 10 septillion years (10 to the 25th power) to accomplish. This test was rigged to demonstrate how a quantum computer operates, but what was significant was how accurately it did so. The Willow chip achieved a 99.8% two-qubit gate fidelity, a measure of the accuracy of the calculation. This is a significant aspect of quantum computing, as it involves inherent errors in calculations due to the way quantum computers operate. Instead of using bits like a traditional computer, which transmits information as a 0 or a 1, quantum computers use qubits, which can be better described as the probability of an answer being a 0 or a 1. This makes quantum computers excellent for computing tasks that don't have a discrete answer, and incredibly useful for solving problems that can take multiple paths to a final answer, such as weather modeling, logistics networks, and AI. Alphabet is a leader in the quantum computing arms race and has the excess cash flows to invest a massive amount in this technology if it feels that it's worth it. This makes Alphabet a key player in this space, and it's a stock that I like for the long term. Microsoft Alphabet isn't the only big tech company competing in the quantum computing arms race. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) also has significant investments in quantum computing and is pursuing the industry for a similar reason as Alphabet: to ensure it has the best computing technology available for its own use and for its cloud computing clients to harness. Microsoft claims to have created a new state of matter in its Majorana 1 quantum computing chip that allows it to control the qubits precisely. This makes the calculation incredibly accurate, once again addressing the key problem with quantum computers currently. Microsoft has similar advantages to Alphabet, and its presence in the quantum computing space should not be overlooked. IonQ IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) is a pure-play quantum computing company. There's no backup plan for IonQ; it's quantum computing relevancy or bust. However, IonQ has partnerships with the U.S. Air Force Research Lab (one of the leading government labs), and it has taken an approach that no other company has. IonQ employs a trapped-ion approach and utilizes all-to-all connectivity. It is generally accepted that qubits become more accurate when they're allowed to interact with each other. While many companies have taken the approach to allow qubits to interact with their neighbors in a grid-like system, IonQ has taken it a step further by allowing every qubit to interact with each other. This approach has delivered an industry-leading 99.9% two-qubit gate fidelity to IonQ.\ Additionally, nearly every other quantum computing competitor needs to cool down its chips to near absolute zero, an incredibly expensive process. However, IonQ's technology operates at room temperature, which could be a key advantage for wide-scale deployment. Although IonQ is still a long way from generating meaningful revenue, I appreciate its approach and current technology, and I believe it's a great way to invest in a pure-play quantum computing company. However, it is an incredibly risky play, and the stock could go to zero if it fails. As a result, investors need to keep their position sizing relatively small. Should you invest $1,000 in IonQ right now? Before you buy stock in IonQ, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and IonQ wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $674,432!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,005,854!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is1,049% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to180%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Keithen Drury has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Microsoft. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Globe and Mail
3 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Here's Why Nebius Group Nearly Doubled in the First Half of 2025
Key Points Nebius is one of the big new AI "neoclouds" backed by Nvidia. Like peer CoreWeave, Nebius saw hypergrowth in the first half of 2025. Nebius also took a majority stake in a Jeff Bezos-backed AI company. 10 stocks we like better than Nebius Group › Shares of Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) nearly doubled in the first half of 2025, rising 99.7% through June 30, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Nebius is a "new" version of an old company called Yandex, which had been known as the "Russian Google." After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Yandex divested its Russian assets, reheadquartered in Amsterdam, and then went about using its data center expertise to build a European artificial intelligence (AI) "neocloud" in the vein of CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV). The company relisted on the Nasdaq in August 2024. Coming into 2025, Nebius therefore looked like a start-up, with lots of cash, in-progress assets, and little revenue; however, the company soon showed explosive growth that led to widespread optimism it would become a major AI winner. Another Nvidia-backed neocloud showing triple-digit growth Back in December 2024, Nebius raised $700 million in a private placement led by Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). Thus, like CoreWeave, Nebius became one of the neocloud "horses" upon which Nvidia is betting. As the large cloud-computing providers increasingly turn to their own in-house designed AI chips to save money, Nvidia appears to be backing several top-tier "neoclouds," which likely get a preferred allocation of Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs). That early access to the latest Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, along with expertise in running AI GPU infrastructure, gives these companies an advantage. Thus, Nebius and CoreWeave have shown explosive growth as they rent out their infrastructure to hyperscale cloud companies or directly to AI companies such as OpenAI. As an early-stage tech company, Nebius' stock was highly volatile during the first half of the year, falling hard after the DeepSeek R1 model was released and then again following April 2 "Liberation Day." Yet when all was said and done, Nebius' stock nearly doubled by June 30. That came on the back of strong triple-digit revenue growth, lending credence to Nebius' forward guidance at the beginning of the year. May was a big month for Nebius, as it reported first-quarter revenue growth of 385% and 684% growth in annualized recurring revenue (ARR), which leapt to $249 million by the end of Q1. And that growth came with margin expansion, as Nebius' operating costs only grew by 96% in the same period. The massive revenue inflection seemed to vindicate Nebius' initial guidance to reach between $750 million and $1 billion in ARR by the end of 2025. During Q1, Nebius also made an interesting majority investment in Toloka, an expert data provider to AI companies. It was clear in the early stages of AI that sometimes AI gets things wrong or "hallucinates." That's why having good data is crucial, which is where Toloka comes in. Toloka is also backed by Jeff Bezos' venture company Bezos Expeditions, as well as by Mikhail Parakhin, the CTO of Shopify. After surging over 60% in May, Nebius rocketed another 50%-plus in June following a strong endorsement by boutique sell-side firm Arete Research. In an early-June analyst note, Arete's Andrew Beale slapped a $84 price target on Nebius, which is still nearly double today's stock price and was even 50% higher than Nebius' June 30 highs. Arete liked Nebius' execution and the "embedded value" of its AI clusters, given an apparent shortage of Nvidia Blackwell GPUs. Can Nebius keep climbing? At first, Nebius seems very expensive, trading for about 20 times this year's revenue estimates. However, if the company hits the high end of its end-of-year ARR guidance, then the stock is trading at a more reasonable 10 times forward ARR. That's not unreasonable for a company experiencing hypergrowth and expanding margins. However, it's very early in the AI races and in Nebius' revenue trajectory, so it's nearly impossible to tell how "expensive" the stock is from a long-term perspective after its massive first-half run. Should you invest $1,000 in Nebius Group right now? Before you buy stock in Nebius Group, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nebius Group wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $671,477!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,010,880!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is1,047% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to180%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025
