Magic Leap

Unicorn AR Startup Magic Leap is Killing Its First Headset Next Year

September 1, 2023 From roadtovr

Magic Leap 1, the AR headset that helped the Plantation, Florida-based startup attract over three billion dollars in funding, will be completely defunct by late next year.

The company announced this week that Magic Leap 1’s cloud services are due to be shut off on December 31st, 2024. After that date, the headset will receive no further support.

The loss of cloud services indeed means the headset will essentially be ‘bricked’ on that date, as “core functionality will reach end-of-life and the Magic Leap 1 device and apps will cease to function,” the company says in a recent FAQ.

On September 29th, 2023, a number of developer resources are being pulled too, including the forum dedicated to Magic Leap 1 as well as the headset’s dedicated Discord channel.

Here’s the full statement from Magic Leap, courtesy a comment made by Reddit user ‘The Golden Leaper’.

Today we are announcing that Magic Leap 1 end of life date will be December 31, 2024. Magic Leap 1 is no longer available for purchase, but will continue to be supported through December 31, 2024 as follows:

Magic Leap 1 Developer Forum: On September 29th, 2023, Magic Leap 1 Developer Forum (https://ml1-developer.magicleap.com/) will no longer be available. Please refer to the Magic Leap 2 Developer Forum for current information and updates on the Magic Leap platform.

Magic Leap Discord channel: On September 29th, 2023, Magic Leap Discord channel will no longer be available. Please refer to the Magic Leap 2 Developer Forum for current information and updates on the Magic Leap platform.

OS Updates: Magic Leap will only address outages that impact core functionality (as determined by Magic Leap) until December 31, 2024.

Customer Care (http://magicleap.com/contactus) will continue to offer Magic Leap 1 product troubleshooting assistance through December 31, 2024.

Warranties: Magic Leap will continue to honor valid warranty claims under the Magic Leap 1 Warranty Policy available here (https://www.magicleap.com/ml1/warranty-policies).

While no longer sold by Magic Leap, the company was selling ML 1 up until mid-2022. Brand new units, including the headset’s hip-worn compute unit and single controller, were being liquidated for the barn burner deal of $550 via Amazon subsidiary Woot. It’s uncertain how many developers and enterprise users will be affected by the shutdown, however they do have a little over a year to figure out a replacement strategy.

Launched in 2018, Magic Leap straddled an uneasy rift between enterprise and prosumers with ML 1 (known then as ‘ML One’), which gained it a lukewarm reception mostly thanks to its $2,300 price tag and relatively narrow differentiation from Microsoft HoloLens. Despite Magic Leap’s best efforts, it simply wasn’t the consumer device the company wanted to make from the onset.

A leadership shuffle in mid-2020 saw co-founder and CEO Rony Abovitz step down, tapping former Microsoft exec Peggy Johnson to take the reins and immediately pivot to target enterprise with its most recent AR headset, Magic Leap 2.

Report: Meta in Talks with Magic Leap for Multiyear AR Headset Tech Deal

May 22, 2023 From roadtovr

A report from the Financial Times maintains Meta is currently in talks with AR headset creator Magic Leap to strike a multiyear deal, which could include intellectual property licensing and contract manufacturing of AR headsets in North America.

The AR unicorn is said to possess valuable IP regarding custom components, including its optics, waveguides, and software.

It’s said a potential deal may also allow Meta to lessen its reliance on China for component manufacturing. In 2019, Magic Leap partnered with manufacturing solutions company Jabil to create a Guadalajara, Mexico plant which the report maintains can assemble headsets in “the tens of thousands a year.”

Citing people with knowledge of the talks, the report maintains however a specific joint Meta-Magic Leap headset isn’t expected.

While both companies didn’t comment on a potential partnership, Magic Leap said this to the Financial Times:

“Given the complexities of developing true augmented reality technologies and the intricacies involved with manufacturing these optics, as well as the issues many companies experience with overseas supply chain dependencies, we have entered into several non-exclusive IP licensing and manufacturing partnerships with companies looking to enter the AR market or expand their current position.”

Since it exited stealth in 2014, Magic Leap has released two AR headsets, Magic Leap 1 and Magic Leap 2, which have been compared in functionality to Microsoft’s HoloLens AR headsets.

The company has raised over $4 billion, with minority investors including Google, Alibaba, Qualcomm, AT&T, and Axel Springer. Its majority stakeholder is Saudi Arabia’s state-owned sovereign wealth fund.

In addition to Quest Pro mixed reality headset, Meta has confirmed it’s currently working on its next iteration of Quest, likely Quest 3, as well as its own AR glasses. Meta started real-world testing of Project Aria in 2020, a platform for training its AR perception systems and asses public perception of the technology.

Magic Leap 2 Now Supports OpenXR, Strengthening Industry Against Potential Apple Upheaval

April 25, 2023 From roadtovr

Though delayed from its commitment last year, Magic Leap today announced that ML2 now fully supports OpenXR. The timing might have something to do with Apple’s looming entrance into the XR space.

Magic Leap had planned to deliver OpenXR support for its ML2 headset last year, but it was seemingly delayed until now. Today the company announced that Magic Leap 2 is conformant with OpenXR.

OpenXR is an open standard that aims to standardize the development of VR and AR applications, making hardware and software more interoperable. The standard has been in development since 2017 and is backed by virtually every major hardware, platform, and engine company in the XR industry.

“The adoption of OpenXR as a common AR ecosystem standard ensures the continual growth and maturation of AR,” Magic Leap said in its announcement. “Magic Leap will continue to advance this vision as Vice Chair of the OpenXR Working Group. In this role, Magic Leap provides technical expertise and collaborates with other members to address the needs of developers and end-users, the scope of the standard, and best practices for implementation.”

Its true that Magic Leap has been part of the OpenXR Working Group—a consortium responsible for developing the standard—for a long time, but we can’t help but feel like Apple’s heavily rumored entrance into the XR space lit a bit of a fire under the feet of the company to get the work across the finish line.

In doing so, Magic Leap has strengthened itself—and the existing XR industry—against what could be a standards upheaval by Apple.

Apple is well known for ignoring certain widely adopted computing standards and choosing to use their own proprietary technologies, in some cases causing a technical divide between platforms. You very well may have experienced this yourself, have you ever found yourself in a conversation about ‘blue bubbles and green bubbles’ when it comes to texting.

With an industry as young as XR—and with Apple being so secretive about its R&D in the space—there’s a good chance the company will have its own way of doing things, especially when it comes to how developers and their applications are allowed to interact with the headset.

If Apple doesn’t want to support OpenXR, this is likely the biggest risk for the industry; if developers have to change their development processes for Apple’s headset, that would create a divide between Apple and the rest of the industry, making applications less portable between platforms.

And while OpenXR-supporting incumbents have the upper hand for the time being (because they have all the existing XR developers and content on their side), one would be foolish to forget the army of experienced iOS developers that are used to doing things the ‘Apple way’. If those developers start their XR journey with Apple’s tools, it will be less likely that their applications will come to OpenXR headsets.

On the other hand, it’s possible that Apple will embrace OpenXR because it sees the value that has already come from years of ironing out the standard—and the content that already supports it. Apple could even be secretly part of the OpenXR Working Group, as companies aren’t forced to make their involvement known.

In the end it’s very likely that Apple will have its own way of doing things in XR, but whether that manifests more in the content running on the headset or down at the technical level, remains to be seen.

Magic Leap 2 Gains Certification so Doctors Can Use AR During Surgery

January 6, 2023 From roadtovr

Magic Leap, the storied unicorn developing enterprise AR headsets, announced at CES 2023 that its flagship device Magic Leap 2 earned a certification that clears it for use in the operating room.

The company first intimated it had pursued IEC 60601-1 certification at SPIE’s XR conference in January 2022, however the news largely went unreported since the information was presented in a single slide at the conference.

At AMD’s CES 2023 keynote, Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson confirmed Magic Leap 2 has indeed obtained IEC 60601-1 certification for its flagship AR headset.

As explained by TÜV Rheinland, the IEC 60601-1 certification specifies a device that is “intended to diagnose, treat, or monitor a patient under medical supervision and, which makes physical or electrical contact with the patient and/or transfers energy to or from the patient and/or detects such an energy transfer to or from the patient.”

Magic Leap says this certification allows Magic Leap 2 to be used both in an operating room as well as in other clinical settings, allowing medical professionals such as surgeons to focus on the patient and not have to refer to 2D screens.

By and large, this gives software developers a non-inconsequential inroad into gaining FDA certification for apps that could be used during surgery, and not just for pre-surgical training.

One such Magic Leap partner, SentiAR, is currently under review by the FDA for its app which connects physicians to live clinical data and images, allowing them do operations such as navigating a catheter through blood vessels of the heart using a 3D map of a patient’s heart and the location of the catheter in real time.

Founded in 2010, the Plantation, Florida-based company initially exited the gate with consumer ambitions for its first AR headset, Magic Leap 1 (previously styled ‘One’). After awkwardly straddling the segment with its $2,300 AR headset, the company made a decisive pivot in mid-2020 when CEO and co-founder Rony Abovitz announced he would be stepping down as CEO, positioning the company to reprioritize its future devices away from consumers. It has since released Magic Leap 2, which is largely targeted at enterprise.

The well-funded company, which has amassed $4 billion in lifetime funds to date, has recently taken on $450 million from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, giving the country a majority share in the US-based augmented reality company.

Saudi Arabia Gains Majority Stake in Magic Leap in $450M Deal

January 3, 2023 From roadtovr

Saudi Arabia has taken majority share of the US-based augmented reality company Magic Leap, The Telegraph reports, widening the stake via its state-owned sovereign wealth fund with a deal amounting to $450 million.

Citing delayed accounts obtained from its European division, the company is said to have raised $150 million in preferred convertible stock and $300 million in debt from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) over the course of 2022. The investment puts the country’s ownership of Magic Leap over 50 percent, giving it overall majority control.

The Telegraph reports that, as of November 2022, Saudi Arabia’s PIF is “entitled to appoint four of the eight directors of the board of directors of Magic Leap.”

The wealth fund, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, invests in projects considered to be strategically significant to diversifying its national economy.

Through PIF, Saudi Arabia owns minority stakes in Uber, Capcom, Nexon, Live Nation, Boeing, Meta, Alphabet, Citigroup, Disney, and Bank of America to name a few. It also owns Premier League football team Newcastle United and LIV Golf, a challenger to the PGA Tour.

Founded in 2010 by Rony Abovitz, the Plantation, Florida-based company kicked off its consumer ambitions with a long and ambitious tease of its first AR headset, Magic Leap 1 (previously styled ‘One’), starting its marketing campaign as it emerged from stealth in 2014.

Released nearly four years later, the developer-focused ‘Creator Edition’ headset was initially priced at an eye-watering $2,300, which not only deflated some of the potent hype behind the unicorn startup, but also cemented a long and bumpy road ahead if Magic Leap wanted to eventually offer its tech at a consumer price point.

Having awkwardly straddled the prosumer segment with limited success, in mid-2020 Abovitz announced he would be stepping down as CEO, signaling a pivot that would refocus the company’s efforts on servicing enterprise instead of consumers. Shortly afterward, Microsoft’s Executive VP of Business Development Peggy Johnson took the reins as CEO of Magic Leap.

The company has since released its follow-up headset, Magic Leap 2, to enterprise partners and through third-party vendors, putting the device in direct competition with Microsoft’s HoloLens 2.

To date, Magic Leap has raised $4 billion, with minority investors including Google, Alibaba, Qualcomm, AT&T, and Axel Springer.