Magic Leap
Magic Leap is an American company that sells augmented reality headsets, mainly the Magic Leap 2, and previously sold the Magic Leap 1. It was founded by Rony Abovitz.
Magic Leap became owned by companies outside of the U.S.A. It is majority owned by Saudi Arabia's government.[1]
Magic Leap had publicized lightfield display technology, but did not use it for the Magic Leap 1. Magic Leap used standard waveguide displays for the Magic Leap 1.
Magic Leap's address is 7500 West Sunrise Boulevard, Plantation, Florida.[2]
Products[edit]
Manufacturing[edit]
Magic Leap funded the development of a Jabil manufacturing plant that is currently in Guadalajara, Mexico.[3]
History[edit]
- Rony Abovitz founded of Magic Leap. Magic Leap originally started as a music recording studio.[4]
Brian Schowengerdt was co-founder and chief technical guy of Magic Leap.[5][6]
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.
2011: Magic Leap began as Magic Leap Studios based in Flordia, U.S. Rony Abovitz attended Comic-Con and released its first Virtual Reality app.
2014: Richard Taylor, co-founder of 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.
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.
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.[7]
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 Temasek, an investment firm in Asia.
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.
Magic Leap generated a lot of buzz.[8] Expectations peaked when it was announced that they had received a large amount of funding from Alibaba, Google, and others.
References[edit]
- ↑ "Google, augmented reality startup Magic Leap strike partnership deal: Reuters". 2024-05-30. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/30/google-augmented-reality-startup-magic-leap-strike-partnership-deal-reuters.html.
- ↑ "Magic Leap". 2022-04-05. https://thearea.org/area-members/magic-leap/.
- ↑ Hayden, Scott (2023-05-22). "Report: Meta in Talks with Magic Leap for Multiyear AR Headset Tech Deal". https://www.roadtovr.com/report-meta-talks-magic-leap-multiyear-ar-headset-tech-deal/.
- ↑ https://voicesofvr.com/1116-magic-leaps-origin-story-goal-of-neurologically-true-reality-with-founder-rony-abovitz/
- ↑ "Brian Schowengerdt". 2021-05-04. https://www.crunchbase.com/person/brian-schowengerdt.
- ↑ Guttag, Karl (2016-11-20). "Magic Leap – Separating Magic and Reality". https://kguttag.com/2016/11/20/magic-leap-separating-magic-and-reality/.
- ↑ http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/20/magic-leap-wsjdlive/
- ↑ Alden, William (2015-10-21). "Magic Leap Shows A Glimpse Of Its Augmented Reality Tech". https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/williamalden/magic-leap-shows-a-glimpse-of-its-augmented-reality-tech#.ihnBQWRew1.