North

North (formerly Thalmic Labs) was a wearable-computing hardware company founded in 2012 in Kitchener, Ontario by University of Waterloo graduates Stephen Lake, Matthew Bailey, and Aaron Grant. It first shipped the Myo gesture-control armband, which read electrical muscle activity to wirelessly control computers and other devices, and later pivoted to Focals, consumer smart glasses with a heads-up display. A Y Combinator Winter 2013 company that raised over $140M, North was acquired by Google in January 2020 and wound down; its products and consumer-facing website (bynorth.com) were discontinued. This profile is retained as a network record. North published no public API, developer portal, or SDKs, so there is no API surface to enrich.

North is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Wearables, Hardware, Smart Glasses, and Gesture Control.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

6.8/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

0 APIs

CompanyWearablesHardwareSmart GlassesGesture ControlAugmented RealityConsumer ElectronicsAcquiredY Combinator

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

Composite quality — 6.8/100 · minimal

Contract Quality 0.0 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 0.0 / 20

Commercial Clarity 0.0 / 20

Operational Transparency 0.0 / 13

Governance 0.0 / 12

Discoverability 6.8 / 10

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 15

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

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Resources

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

CompanyProfile

CompanyProfile

Source (apis.yml)

aid: north
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/north.png
name: North
description: North (formerly Thalmic Labs) was a wearable-computing hardware company founded in 2012 in Kitchener, Ontario
  by University of Waterloo graduates Stephen Lake, Matthew Bailey, and Aaron Grant. It first shipped the Myo gesture-control
  armband, which read electrical muscle activity to wirelessly control computers and other devices, and later pivoted to Focals,
  consumer smart glasses with a heads-up display. A Y Combinator Winter 2013 company that raised over $140M, North was acquired
  by Google in January 2020 and wound down; its products and consumer-facing website (bynorth.com) were discontinued. This
  profile is retained as a network record. North published no public API, developer portal, or SDKs, so there is no API surface
  to enrich.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/north/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- y-combinator
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
x-status: acquired
x-acquired-by: google
x-acquired-date: 2020-01
x-former-name: Thalmic Labs
x-yc-batch: W2013
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-20'
tags:
- Company
- Wearables
- Hardware
- Smart Glasses
- Gesture Control
- Augmented Reality
- Consumer Electronics
- Acquired
- Y Combinator
common:
- type: CompanyProfile
  url: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/north
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-20'
  status: nochange
  artifacts_added: 0
  pass: local-v1