Augmented reality (AR)/mixed reality (MR) company Magic Leap has raised its fair share of funding in its time, most recently from investor, Axel Springer, having secured almost $2 billion USD of investment over the last six years. Magic Leap has yet to launch its debut product Magic Leap One, yet a new report indicates that talks are in the works to secure more.
Magic Leap has supposedly been in talks with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to raise up to $400 million (£286 million GBP) of new capital the Financial Times reports (paywalled). With the deal due to be officially announced in the coming weeks, the additional funding will bring total investment into Magic Leap of $2.3 billion (£1.6 billion).
That’s quite a sizable amount considering the tech company has yet to release an actual product, having only recently released several images. After securing $502 million in a Series D equity funding round in October 2017 from new and returning investors such as EDBI – a Singapore-based global fund, Grupo Globo from Brazil, Janus Henderson Investors and Alibaba Group, Google LLC and J.P. Morgan Investment Management respectively, Magic Leap One was finally unveiled in December.
Three components were showcased in the announcement, the headset itself which Magic Leap has dubbed ‘Lightwear’, the battery and processing unit called ‘Lightpack’, and the controller, which has force control, haptic feedback and 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF) movement.
No official price has been announced just yet, with the system expected to retail for around $1,500 to $2,000. At that price Magic Leap One is definitely aimed more towards enterprise and developers – much like Microsoft HoloLens – with shipments due to start at some point this year.
While Magic Leap One and HoloLens are at the top end of AR technology, for the general public there’s still plenty to get their hands on thanks to smartphones. Google recently announced the roll out of ARCore 1.0., bringing advanced AR features to Android. And yesterday Samsung officially revealed the Galaxy S9 and S9+, featuring AR Emoji’s. As further details about Magic Leap and its AR headset are revealed, VRFocus will let you know.
via Mint VR