I wonder if we have Kickstarter to thank for this new advertising model

It's because they convinced Google to give them a half billion dollars. That is seen as verification of their claims.

Low-hanging fruit is becoming increasingly more rare. The only real path forward is hard technology. Hard technology requires tolerance for risk, given the necessity of hardtech taking such risks should be celebrated.

They do have a note in at least their most recent video that the video is filmed through their tech with no post-processing, so I think it's a bit more than a concept video even if it's still hard to judge how far along the tech is.

That's what they mean by "cooked".