Magic Leap

Magic Leap logo

Magic Leap is an augmented reality company that sells the Magic Leap 2, and previously sold Magic Leap One headsets. It was founded by Rony Abovitz.

Magic Leap became a foreign agent owned by companies outside of the U.S.A. It is majority owned by Saudi Arabia's government.

Magic leap abandoned the light field idea and instead implemented a standard waveguide display for the Magic Leap 1.

Its name is in reference to a "magic leap" for mankind, referring to the progress that man can make using augmented reality. It makes reference to Neil Armstrong's quote about a giant leap for mankind, likening augmented reality to space travel as the next step in man's evolution and exploration of knowledge.

A Magic Leap slide deck uses a photo of a PowerBook G3 "PDQ" model from Wikipedia.

Products

• Magic Leap One (The creator edition and the "Magic Leap 1")
• Magic Leap 2

Prototype

The optical head-mounted display is a glasses-like wearable connected to a small box (possibly?). It will be a small, self-contained computer that will be comfortable for people to use in public.

Manufacturing

Magic Leap partnered with Jabil to create a manufacturing plant in Guadalajara, Mexico.

User Interface

Totems

A totem is a real-world physical item that can be identified using computer vision and used in an application.

Different types of objects would be identified differently and have different uses and projections based on their identities. For example small, rectangular blocks of wood, metal or plastic could be identified as "computer mouse". User can move the object while Magic Leap tracks its position, speed and acceleration and feeds the information to its display, simulating the movement of the mouse. Magic Leap could also project a virtual keyboard onto various surfaces. Computer Vision and Object Recognition would key components of Magic Leap and its Totems.

Business

Rony Abovitz is founder of Magic Leap.

2011: Magic Leap began as Magic Leap Studios based in Flordia, U.S. It was initially making a graphic novel and a series of featured films. Rony Abovitz attended Comic-Con and released its first Virtual Reality app.

2014: Richard Taylor, co-founder of special effects company Weta Workshop, along with Neal Stephenson, science fiction writer, is working for Magic Leap.

February 5, 2014: Magic Leap raised 50 million dollars in Series A round.

March 6, 2014: Graeme Devine joined Magic Leap as its Chief Creative Officer & Senior VP Games.

October 21, 2014: Magic Leap raised 542 million dollars in Series B round from Google, Qualcomm Ventures, Andressen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Legendary Entertainment and Obvious Ventures.

December 16, 2014: Neal Stephenson, writer of Snow Crash, joined Magic Leap as the Chief Futurist.

June 1, 2015: Rio Caraeff, co-founder of Vevo, joined Magic Leap as its Chief Content Officer.

June 2, 2015: The Magic Leap SDK was announced and sign-ups became available on its website.

The Magic Leap headset was announced to utilize its own operating system built specifically for the headset.

February 2, 2016: Magic Leap raised 793.5 million dollars in Series C round led by Alibaba. Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, joined Magic Leap on its board of directors.

October 18, 2017: Magic Leap raised $502 million dollars in Series D round led by Singaporean investment firm Temasek.

Magic leap was developing in stealth mode starting in the year +2011. Magic Leap's goal was to create a near eye display system using light fields. The company has raised over 590 million dollars from Google, Qualcomm, Andressen Horowitz and other investors. On December 9, 2015, it was revealed that Magic Leap was raising $827 million dollars in a new round of venture funding.

Until 2017, the company had been regularly making headlines and generating a lot of buzz in the tech community. Expectations peaked in the year +2014 when it was announced that they have received funding from giants such as Alibaba, Google, and others.