Virgance Labs, the tiny ten-employee startup behind Epiphany Eyewear, was quietly acquired by Snapchat in an unannounced fifteen-million-dollar deal. On Business Wars, host David Brown detailed the startup's final independent days in March 2014, describing the "cramped, overcrowded offices of Virgance Labs" where the air smelled of cooking oil and police sirens constantly interrupted their work as they struggled to scale against Google.
The buyout rescued the struggling hardware player. David Brown recounted how Virgance Labs CEO Eric Miller swore his team to secrecy, telling them, "Okay, but you need to promise to keep it secret. We're not doing a press release, not putting anything on the buyer's website or ours." According to the show, Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel personally orchestrated the deal, handing over eleven million dollars in cash and four million in stock to absorb the team and their smart glasses tech.
Though the acquisition kept the startup afloat, it thrust their technology into a high-stakes corporate rivalry. With Meta and Google still fighting for dominance in the smart glasses arena, the quiet legacy of Virgance Labs serves as the foundational blueprint for the consumer wearables we see today.