Remember Unity Software? Yeah, that company that was supposed to power the metaverse before we all realized the metaverse was basically expensive VR goggles that made us look like we were auditioning for a sci-fi B-movie.
Wall Street wrote Unity’s obituary faster than you can say “failed IPO hype.” The stock went from darling to dumpster fire when the metaverse turned out to be about as popular as pineapple on pizza in Italy. But here’s the plot twist nobody saw coming: Unity might have been building for the wrong decade, but the right century.
The Three Waves of AI (Or: How to Sound Smart at Parties)
Think of AI evolution like this:
Wave 1: ChatGPT taught AI to talk. Suddenly everyone’s nephew became an “AI expert” because they could make a chatbot write their college essays.
Wave 2: Agentic AI taught AI to actually do stuff. Instead of just chatting, AI started booking your flights, managing your calendar, and probably judging your life choices.
Wave 3: Physical AI is teaching AI to live in the real world. We’re talking robots, AR glasses, and holographic displays that don’t require you to look like a cyborg from 2003.
And guess what? Unity’s been accidentally building the perfect toolkit for Wave 3 this whole time.
Why Unity is Actually Genius (In Hindsight)
While everyone was dunking on Unity for the metaverse flop, they missed something crucial: Unity wasn’t really built for clunky VR headsets. It was built for a world where digital stuff lives seamlessly in physical space.
Think Iron Man’s Jarvis, but less “I’m a billionaire genius” and more “I can actually afford this tech.” Unity’s real-time 3D engine can handle:
- AR apps that don’t make you motion sick
- Robot simulations (because apparently we need to teach robots to walk before they take over)
- Cross-platform development that actually works
The company powers 70% of mobile games, but that’s like saying Amazon just sells books. Unity built the infrastructure for interactive 3D worlds, and it turns out that’s exactly what Physical AI needs.
The Nvidia Parallel Nobody’s Talking About
Remember when Nvidia was “just a gaming chip company”? Then AI happened, and suddenly those gaming chips were the secret sauce for machine learning. Nvidia went up 20x because they had the right tool at the right time.
Unity’s in a similar spot. They look like a “busted gaming engine” to most investors, but they’re sitting on the operating system for the Physical AI era. While Apple, Google, and Meta build their walled gardens, developers need something that works everywhere. Unity is already that thing.
The Bottom Line
Sometimes the best investments aren’t the shiny new things everyone’s talking about. They’re the forgotten companies quietly building the infrastructure for tomorrow while everyone else is distracted by today’s headlines.
Unity got written off because they were early to a party that hadn’t started yet. But if Physical AI becomes as big as we think it will, Unity might just end up being the operating system that powers it all.
Not bad for a “failed” metaverse play, right?