Prospective investors often toured the factory of View in northwestern Mississippi as the cash-burning smart-glass maker sought new capital. But the visitors did not ask the questions that might have alerted them to the potential problems in the manufacturing process, a former employee told Insider.
View makes glass for commercial-building windows that use low-voltage wiring to control the tint. When it's sunny, the window darkens to limit glare and heat, eliminating the need for blinds and reducing energy costs for air conditioning.
It's costly. Moreover, there's little room for error: The glass cannot be used if there's a single imperfection. And employees said they were discouraged from speaking up about their concerns over the manufacturing process.
In 2013, executives from Corning, the manufacturing giant behind Pyrex, visited the factory, one employee who worked there at the time and had direct knowledge of the situation told Insider. The executives quizzed View about the manufacturing process, but the employee kept waiting for them to dig deeper.
"It was crazy to me that going through due diligence with all these investors, people from sovereign-wealth funds and managing billions of dollars, couldn't ask the simple, basic questions," such as costs or how much glass was thrown away, the factory employee said of Corning.
According to this person and two other factory employees at the time, it was normal to throw away most of the windows produced because of defects.
In June that year, Corning led a $62 million investment in View. Lenders or investors in View, which include institutions like BlackRock and SoftBank, were enamored by company CEO Rao Mulpuri's story that its smart glass would be the future of office buildings. A spokesperson for Corning did not comment in time for publication.
A decade later, View has not turned a profit. Last month, the Milpitas, California, firm cast doubt on its ability to continue, roughly 14 months after raising $815 million when it went public.
For those looking from the outside, View's troubles came on suddenly, but insiders said the company burned cash and struggled with product failures for years.
