Organization
Magic Leap
Florida-based augmented-reality company that shifted from selling its own headsets toward waveguide manufacturing and device integration.
Stories on Angle
Background
Selected excerpts from Wikipedia. This is general background, not Angle's reporting, and it may have changed since the stories above were published.
Magic Leap, Inc. is an American technology company that makes augmented reality headsets and software. Its first product was a head-mounted augmented reality display, called Magic Leap One, which superimposes 3D computer-generated imagery over real world objects. It is attempting to construct a light-field chip using silicon photonics. The company has since released the Magic Leap 2 and stopped selling the Magic Leap 1.
Magic Leap was founded by Rony Abovitz in 2010 and has raised $2.6 billion from a list of investors including Google and Alibaba Group.
History
Magic Leap was founded by Rony Abovitz in 2010. The startup evolved from a company named "Magic Leap Studios" which around 2010 was working on a graphic novel and a feature film series, and in 2011 became a corporation, releasing an augmented reality app at Comic-Con that year. In October 2014, when the company was still operating in stealth mode (but already reported to be working on projects relating to augmented reality and computer vision), it raised more than $540 million of venture funding from Google, Qualcomm, Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins, among other investors.
A November 2014 analysis by Gizmodo, based on job listings, trademark registrations and patent applications from Magic Leap, concluded that the company appeared to be building a competitor to the Google Glass and Oculus Rift that would "blend computer-generated graphics with the real world". It had also been compared to Microsoft HoloLens.
Before Magic Leap, a head-mounted display using light field had been demonstrated by Nvidia in 2013, and the MIT Media Lab has also constructed a 3D display using "compressed light fields"; however, Magic Leap asserts that it achieves better resolution with a new proprietary technique that projects an image directly onto the user's retina. According to a researcher who studied the company's patents, Magic Leap is likely to use stacked silicon waveguides.
Richard Taylor of special effects company Weta Workshop was briefly involved in Magic Leap alongside Abovitz. Science fiction author Neal Stephenson joined the company in December 2014. Graeme Devine is their Chief Creative Officer & Senior VP Games, Apps and Creative Experiences.
On October 20, 2015, Magic Leap released actual footage of their product. While still not showing any hardware, the footage claims that it was filmed through a Magic Leap device without the use of special effects or compositing.
On December 9, 2015, Forbes reported on documents filed in the state of Delaware, indicating a Series C funding round of $827m. This funding round could bring the company's total funding to $1.4 billion, and its post-money valuation to $3.7 billion. On February 2, 2016, it was reported that Magic Leap further raised another funding round of close to $800m, valuing it at $4.5 billion.
On June 16, 2016, Magic Leap announced a partnership with Disney's Lucasfilm and its ILMxLAB R&D unit. …
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