What happened
Gores Holding VI (GHVI), the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merging with Matterport, was up 13.5% on Wednesday. Matterport announced a new partnership with Facebook's (META 0.11%) artificial intelligence (AI) research to make its dataset of 3D spaces available for academic research. Shares were up as much as 20% on the news.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Matterport is making its Habitat-Matterport 3D Research Dataset (HM3D) free and available for all researchers to use and study under this deal. HM3D is a collection of high-resolution virtual indoor spaces, which according to Facebook and Matterport, have been lacking within AI research. Now, anyone who uses Facebook's AI research simulator can access HM3D to help train artificial intelligence and robots in 3D environments.
Investors were clearly excited by this announcement, shooting shares up more than 10% on the news. Partnering with a big tech company like Facebook is another sign of Matterport's leadership in the spatial data industry.
Now what
While partnering with Facebook is a sign of Matterport's technological strength, it will likely have a minimal impact on its business. It is great that Matterport is making the data accessible for researchers, but if nobody is paying for the technology, it won't be getting any revenue for it.
If you're invested in Matterport through Gores Holding VI, you should be focused on what the company is doing to grow its financials. It expects to generate $123 million in sales this year and thinks it can hit $747 million in annual revenue by 2025, according to its SPAC merger presentation. A research partnership with Facebook, while exciting, will not do much to get it toward these goals.
