View Dynamic Glass has recently received $1.1 billion in funding from SoftBank, with the valuation undisclosed. SoftBank was the lone investor in this round of funding. Previous to this investment, Greentech startup View Inc. had raised an accumulation of $800 million. This has been SoftBank’s first major investment following the Saudi killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, so it will be interesting to see how/if taking money from the Saudi-backed fund will affect View’s customer relations. In need of growing their manufacturing plant in Mississippi to accommodate their influx of demand and research other innovative ways to use their glass (such as for security purposes), View—seemingly without regret—accepted this money.
While the price of View’s glass costs nearly four times that of regular glass, their smart glass pays in the long run. Allowing natural light into buildings not only lowers energy costs by 20%, but also reduces headaches, eyestrain, and drowsiness by more than 50%, creates value for rent space, and creates an overall increase in efficiency. These benefits seem to outweigh the cons from the perspective of the customer, as View has officially reached 450 projects, covering 35 million square feet of buildings. Some of their largest customers include: Facebook, Fedex Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., USAA, Duke, SMU, Nestle, and Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
If View’s success continues, SoftBank has found themselves in a great situation in a rapidly growing industry. One study by Research and Markets predicts the smart glass market will rise from $3.12 billion (2017) up to $14.24 billion by 2026. Outside the niche of smart glass, the broader market for construction glass is also supposed to spring to $115 billion by 2020. As more companies prepare to adapt to the new, more environmentally friendly times, it can be assumed that some of this growth will translate into the Greentech niche. As a pioneer of the smart glass space—and one of the only companies to have completely digitized the window—View reaps quite a large market share. While the appropriate market share is not publicly known, View is a consensus top player in the global industry. Some of View’s top competitors include SAGE Glass, Asahi Glass Company, PPG Industries, and ChromoGenics AB.
However, not everything is paradise for View and SoftBank. Upon further digging, it seems that View, despite their advertised success, may actually be creating a faulty produc. The company also has a toxic inner culture, which is producing an absurdly high turnover. One Glassdoor review had the words, “management leads by fear and unrealistic expectations,” and another even featured a joke about the high turnover rate and how the one perk is that there is an increasing number of open parking spaces. In addition, in a similar situation to failed health technology startup Theranos, the CFO of View quit and walked out of the office one day. For what has now amounted to three months, View has been operating without a CFO.
This investment by SoftBank into unicorn startup View Inc. can go one of two ways: follow a similar trend as its industry and make great returns or can crumble. Interestingly, the Glassdoor reviews are remarkably similar to both Theranos and Enron…