Google to buy Lytro for circa $40 million US

According to unnamed sources, Google is in plans to buy imaging company Lytro, with a price tag somewhere in the range of $25 to $40 million USD.

Lytro first emerged in 2011 with their unique light field cameras that captured the “light field” of a scene, allowing focus to be adjusted after capture. A light field camera (LFC) doesn't capture 'pictures' in the traditional way - rather it captures information about where light is travelling. This information can then be turned into an image, or as in the case of the Lytro, a series of images with adjustable focal points.

In 2014 the company followed their original effort with the Illum, which retailed at more than three times the price of the original Lytro LFC. However it failed to sell and, according to Petapixel, was being offered as Amazon’s Deal of the Day for just $400.

In 2016 the company moved from photography and into the world of virtual reality. A 755-megapixel cinema camera with 40K resolution and a frame rate of 300fps soon followed, however this doesn't appear to have been popular either.

And now, despite raising over $215 million and being valued by investors at roughly $360 million in 2017, Lytro was, according to Tech Crunch, being shopped around the tech industry, with prices ranging from $25 to $40 million.

The move by Google to purchase the company makes sense as the search engine giant already has an established VR business, and will most likely be able to take with it Lytro's patents for VR technology.