It is reported that the leader in the field of artificial intelligence, OpenAI, is planning to lead the new round of financing for the consumer electronics startup, Opal.

The total investment amount for this Series B funding round is expected to reach up to $60 million. In addition to OpenAI, several existing investors of Opal are also expected to participate in this round of financing, which may include well-known venture capital firms such as Founders Fund and Kindred Ventures, as well as individuals like YouTube influencer Casey Neistat.

Founded in 2020, Opal is a consumer electronics company focused on developing high-end webcams. The company was co-founded by CEO Veeraj Chugh and co-founder Stefan Sohlstrom.

Four years ago, against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the trend of working from home, Opal seized the opportunity to launch its first product, the C1 webcam, which quickly gained market favor.

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Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, as an investor in Opal, has praised the C1's performance as astonishing.However, while C1 has achieved success, it also faces many challenges. Due to the small size of the company, it initially only had 4 employees, which made it difficult to meet the surging demand for orders.

In addition, C1's software application has many issues, with poor user experience and poor compatibility, and the price of $299 also makes many people hesitate.

In order to solve these problems and further expand the market, Opal has been expanding its team size in recent years, improving supply chain management, and starting to develop the next generation of products.

At the end of 2023, Opal launched its second product, the Tadpole webcam. This new product, priced at $149, is not an upgrade to C1, but a portable webcam designed specifically for laptops.

Tadpole adopts a new design concept, aiming to solve users' needs for high-quality video calls in business travel and mobile office scenarios.Therefore, its exterior design is extremely compact, with a thickness approximately equal to a pack of chewing gum, and a weight comparable to a size 5 battery, making it easy to attach to a laptop screen.

At the same time, Tadpole can record video with a resolution as high as 3840x2160 pixels, a clarity that Opal claims is usually only achieved by more expensive webcams. It also performs well in environments that are too dark or too bright.

Compared to the C1, Tadpole's biggest advantage lies in its ease of use. Users only need to connect it to a computer and can use it without additional settings. Although Opal still provides a companion application called Composer for users to manually adjust image parameters, this is no longer necessary.

Tadpole can be recognized by almost all video applications as a standard webcam, greatly improving compatibility. In addition, Tadpole also supports the Windows system for the first time, further expanding its potential user base.

However, Tadpole also has some limitations. Due to its design mainly targeting laptops, it is not suitable for desktop monitors.Despite this, Opal remains optimistic about its market prospects, believing that the demand for high-quality, portable webcams will continue to grow as people gradually return to the office and resume business travel.

This investment by OpenAI in Opal not only demonstrates its interest in the high-end consumer electronics market but may also herald a deeper collaboration between the two companies in the field of AI hardware in the future.

According to reports, after completing this round of financing, Opal plans to divert some resources to the development of other AI-driven electronic devices. These devices are described as "creative tools" for consumers and are likely to integrate OpenAI's image and video generation models.

In fact, Opal has already accumulated some experience in AI hardware. Its first product, the C1, uses the Intel Movidius Myriad X vision processor, which is specifically optimized for the operation of AI models.

With the addition of OpenAI, Opal's exploration in the field of AI hardware is expected to accelerate further. It is worth noting that OpenAI's layout in AI hardware is not limited to the consumer electronics field. According to reports, the company is negotiating with Broadcom to develop custom AI chips.For this reason, OpenAI has also recruited several engineers who have been involved in the development of Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). These moves indicate that OpenAI is actively planning AI infrastructure to support its rapidly growing business needs.

So far, OpenAI has invested in more than a dozen startups through a venture capital fund launched three years ago, with several companies using their large language models to drive products.

Among them, Figure AI has just launched a humanoid robot, Figure 02, which uses a custom model to process users' natural language commands.

OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, is also very interested in AI hardware products. He has invested in the company Humane in his own name.

The company has launched a wearable device called Ai Pin, but users do not buy it, and the end is miserable, and it is even reported that it is looking for a buyer to take over the company.In general, OpenAI's investment in Opal reflects the increasingly close integration trend between AI technology and the consumer electronics industry.

With the continuous advancement of AI algorithms, it has become possible to deploy them to edge devices, which can not only enhance user experience but also achieve more innovative applications while protecting privacy.

In the future, we can expect to see more intelligent hardware products that integrate AI technology emerging, bringing consumers a brand new user experience. As for whether OpenAI's bet in the field of AI hardware will be successful, we will wait and see.