Twelve grand? For a BIKE???!!!! For that sort of money the 'transport case' had better come with an engine, 4WD and a decent stereo...

Bike prices have been getting stupid in recent years.
This design is almost identical to Whyte Bikes' PRST1 and JW-2 bikes from 2000! This design looks rather more fragile and less practical though. It's also similar (in layout) to Muddy Fox's "Interactive" system from 1995, though that did even freakier stuff by synchronising front and rear suspension!
I like this kind of design - one of the problems with regular telescopic forks is that stiction (resistance to initial movement, static friction in the fork due to contamination, poor lubrication etc) is relatively large as there is 1:1 relationship between movement of the suspension and the wheel. Rear suspension tends to be much smoother as the wheel has far more leverage on a shorter shock (e.g. the shock on an 8" travel bike might only compress by 2"), so stiction's static friction is more easily overcome and you get better small-bump performance.
Silly price though.

29"? I see 27.5" on the tyres.
I agree $12K is ludicrous for this monstrosity. I get that it’s a prototype but it’s still ugly as sin and too heavy.
The components are not even high end and for that price I'd be expecting the very best.
10/10 for ingenuity though.

Bike PRICES have been geeting stupid, I'd say this design is stupid. I must have missed where everyone was complaining about the poor performance of reasonably priced telescopic forks and the need for something else.

It seems that this suspension design would allow the front tire to rotate back toward the frame when under compression.
I'm not up to speed on the technicalities of mountain biking but wouldn't this be detrimental? It seems to me that if the tire/wheel rotated back that it would take energy away from the riders forward momentum, I may be looking at it all wrong though.

Making things more complicated for marginal gains always works out well plus as we see here never hurts the price either. Plus this design is really a looker isn't it?

Looks kinda like an awkward cross between an Earles fork and BMW's telelever suspension.

The theory of the wheel moving to the rear of the vehicle comes from off road buggy racing. The principle is that the rearward movement takes the wheel away from the obstruction which makes the jolt less severe. The old VW trailing arm front-end is a perfect example.

I think suspension itself on bicycles is over rated. Like, how hard core are you really at peddling that your bicycle actually needs a suspension to deal with your awesome?
I barely know anyone with a suspension bicycle that leaves pavement on it and most real world people keep it under about 20 MPH.
Competitive/fast down hill mountain biking is the single instance I can even think of where suspension is needed and that makes up about 0.0001% of actual cycling.
Nearly all of that other 99.99% of the time the suspension adds useless weight to the bicycle and absorbs some of your wrath when you do try on some gohard.

Diachi with all due respect I don't think you know what you are talking about, just because you don't know any real mountain bikers (and there are a lot of us) doesn't mean we don't need suspension. Cars could still drive without suspension so lets get rid of that. Sure it will not handle well, cause loss of control and take most the pleasure out of a drive, but hey it will be light and cheap right? I don't race competitively but I own several hard-tail, no suspension and long travel bikes, and each has its place but the rigid would never come out alive of a real bike trail ridden with any kind of normal speed.