Sightful
| Sightful | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Type | Private |
| Industry | Augmented Reality |
| Founded | 2020 |
| Founder | Tamir Berliner, Tomer Kahan |
| Headquarters | Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Notable Personnel | Tamir Berliner (CEO), Tomer Kahan (COO) |
| Products | Spacetop AR laptop and software |
| Website | https://www.sightful.com |
Sightful is an Israeli Augmented Reality company based in Tel Aviv that develops Spacetop, a productivity system that replaces a laptop's physical screen with a large virtual workspace shown through tethered AR glasses. The company was founded in 2020 by Tamir Berliner and Tomer Kahan, both former executives of Magic Leap, and operated under the name Multinarity before rebranding to Sightful in 2022.[1][2] Sightful markets Spacetop as the world's first augmented reality laptop, a product aimed at mobile knowledge work that gives the user a private 100-inch virtual display rather than a conventional 13-inch panel.[3]
Between 2023 and 2025 the company moved through three product forms: an early-access screenless laptop, a refined hardware model called the Spacetop G1, and finally a software-only service that runs on standard Windows laptops paired with off-the-shelf AR glasses. Sightful has raised about 61 million US dollars in funding from investors including Aleph, Corner Ventures, and Insight Partners.[4][5]
History
The company was founded in 2020 as Multinarity. Chief executive Tamir Berliner had previously founded PrimeSense, the depth-sensing company whose technology powered the original Microsoft Kinect and which was later acquired by Apple, and he served as general manager of Magic Leap Israel. Chief operating officer Tomer Kahan had been a vice president at N-Trig and a senior director at Magic Leap.[2][6]
Multinarity left stealth in June 2021 with a 28 million US dollar seed round led by the Israeli venture firm Aleph and the United States fund Corner Ventures, which Calcalist described at the time as the largest seed round in the history of Israeli tech.[2] The company changed its name to Sightful in 2022.[1]
Sightful publicly unveiled its first product on May 19, 2023, announcing the original Spacetop alongside a cumulative funding total of about 61 million US dollars.[4] The company offered an early-access run of 1,000 units priced at 2,000 US dollars, with shipments planned to begin that July.[7]
In mid-2024 the company refreshed the hardware as the Spacetop G1, but the broader market was shifting toward laptops with built-in neural processing units, which made a dedicated AR computer harder to justify. On July 1, 2024, Sightful laid off about 20 employees, roughly a third of its staff of around 60, as it began steering the business toward software.[8] In October 2024 the company cancelled the Spacetop G1 outright, offered refunds to the customers who had placed deposits, and announced that it would instead ship Spacetop as Windows software.[5][6] Sightful relaunched Spacetop in this software form at CES 2025.[9]
Technology
Spacetop is built around the idea of replacing the laptop display with a head-worn one. Instead of a fixed panel, the user wears lightweight AR glasses that show floating windows in the space around them, anchored in place by head tracking so that the workspace stays put as the wearer looks around. Sightful's stated goals are mobility and privacy: the virtual screen is visible only to the wearer, and a large multi-window canvas can be carried anywhere a small keyboard base can go.[1][3]
The early-access Spacetop and the later Spacetop G1 both ran a custom operating system, named Spacetop OS and later SpaceOS, that was based on Android and built specifically for arranging windows in three-dimensional space.[7][3] When the company pivoted to software, it dropped the in-house operating system and rebuilt Spacetop as an application layered on top of Windows, using computer vision to place and stabilize the virtual displays. Because that approach leans on the host laptop's processor and neural accelerator, Sightful initially limited support to recent machines with a capable NPU and to a single glasses model.[9][5]
Products
Sightful's product history runs from a self-contained AR laptop to a subscription service that turns a conventional laptop into one. The table below summarizes the main releases.
| Product | Year | Form | Notable specs and notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spacetop (Early Access) | 2023 | Screenless AR laptop | Announced May 19, 2023; 1,000 units at 2,000 US dollars; used customized Nreal Light glasses with 6DoF head tracking, 53-degree field of view and 1920x1080 per eye; Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB storage, ~5 hours of battery; ran Spacetop OS[7][4] |
| Spacetop G1 | 2024 (announced) | Screenless AR laptop | Announced May 30, 2024 at 1,900 US dollars with a 100 US dollar reservation; bundled Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses (dual OLED, 1920x1080 per eye, 50-degree FoV, 90 Hz); Qualcomm Snapdragon QCS8550, 16 GB LPDDR5, 128 GB storage, up to ~8 hours; Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3, 5G/LTE with nano-SIM; ran SpaceOS; cancelled in October 2024 before shipping[3][10][5] |
| Spacetop (software) | 2025 | Windows AR software | Relaunched at CES 2025 as a subscription; works with Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses over USB-C on Windows laptops with an NPU; subscription priced at 950 US dollars for one year or 1,050 US dollars for two, including the glasses; Mac support placed on a 2026 roadmap[9][5] |
Spacetop (Early Access)
The original Spacetop was a screenless laptop: a keyboard-and-trackpad base roughly the size of a 13-inch notebook, tethered to a pair of customized Nreal Light AR glasses. The glasses provided 6DoF head tracking, a 53-degree field of view and 1920x1080 resolution per eye, while the base housed a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage and about five hours of battery. It ran Sightful's own Spacetop OS, which let the user spread large floating web-browser windows around them rather than switching tabs on a single small screen.[7] Sightful announced it on May 19, 2023 and sold an early-access batch of 1,000 units at 2,000 US dollars, calling it the world's first AR laptop.[4][7]
Spacetop G1
The Spacetop G1, announced on May 30, 2024, was a more polished take on the same concept. It paired its base with Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses, which used two OLED panels at 1920x1080 per eye with a 50-degree field of view and a 90 Hz refresh rate; the glasses weighed about 85 grams and supported prescription inserts.[3][10] The base was powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon QCS8550, paired with 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory and 128 GB of storage, and Sightful claimed roughly eight hours of battery from a 60 Wh cell, which it positioned as a battery-life advantage over rival devices.[3][10] Connectivity included Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3 and 5G/LTE with a nano-SIM slot, and the system ran the Android-based SpaceOS.[3] The G1 was priced at 1,900 US dollars with a 100 US dollar reservation deposit and was due to ship in October 2024, but Sightful cancelled it that month and refunded the deposits.[3][5][6]
Spacetop software
After cancelling its own hardware, Sightful rebuilt Spacetop as software that runs on a standard Windows laptop connected over USB-C to a pair of Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses, recreating the 100-inch multi-window workspace without a dedicated device.[5][9] The company tied the change to the rise of Copilot+ PCs, machines with built-in neural processing units from Qualcomm, Intel or AMD, which gave ordinary laptops enough on-device compute to drive the AR canvas.[6] At CES 2025 Sightful relaunched the product as a subscription that bundled the glasses, priced at 950 US dollars for one year or 1,050 US dollars for two, initially supporting recent Intel Core Ultra laptops in the United States, with Mac support targeted for 2026.[9]
Market position
Sightful occupies a narrow niche in the AR market: rather than building a general-purpose Mixed Reality headset, it focuses entirely on flat, text-heavy productivity work, positioning Spacetop against both traditional laptops and devices such as the Apple Vision Pro.[4][3] Its repeated repositioning, from a 2,000 US dollar early-access laptop, to the cancelled 1,900 US dollar Spacetop G1, to a software subscription, reflects how quickly the surrounding hardware changed: by tethering to widely available Xreal glasses and shifting compute onto the user's own NPU-equipped laptop, Sightful was able to drop the cost and risk of manufacturing its own AR computer.[5][6][9]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "About Us". https://www.sightful.com/about-us.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Revolutionary MR startup Multinarity emerges from stealth with record $28 million Seed round". June 30, 2021. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3911378,00.html.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 "Sightful Unveils 'Spacetop G1' Headless AR Workstation, Aiming to Best the Rest in Battery Life". May 30, 2024. https://www.roadtovr.com/sightful-spacetop-g1-ar-headset-laptop-release/.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 "Sightful Announces $61M Funding Alongside Spacetop AR Laptop". May 19, 2023. https://www.roadtovr.com/sightful-spacetop-announcement-investment-funding/.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 "Sightful Cancels Headless AR Workstation 'Spacetop', Pivots to Windows AR Software". October 9, 2024. https://www.roadtovr.com/ar-latop-spacetop-cancelled-windows-software-pivot/.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 "Sightful Cancels Spacetop, Pivots To PC Software For Xreal Air 2 Ultra". October 8, 2024. https://www.uploadvr.com/sightful-cancels-spacetop-pivots-to-windows-software-for-xreal-glasses/.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 "Spacetop Is A Screenless Laptop With Tethered AR Glasses". May 19, 2023. https://www.uploadvr.com/spacetop-is-a-screenless-laptop-paired-with/.
- ↑ "AR laptop developer Sightful laying off a third of its employees". July 1, 2024. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rkeyfjlv0.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 "At CES, Sightful relaunches Spacetop: AR to make a 100" laptop monitor". January 7, 2025. https://www.laptopmag.com/laptops/spacetop-augmented-reality-launch-ces-2025.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 "AR laptop puts 100-inch virtual screen in front of your eyes". June 7, 2024. https://newatlas.com/laptops/sightful-spacetop-g1/.