I am impressed Google has been able to spot this company. Looks like Google has scouts that are constantly scouring through the tech startup landscape to try and find the next big things. What it can not do in-house, it hopes to invest in heavily. Good idea. Not even Google can do it all in-house. Google could kill Magic Leap if it acquired it, even Google could. And they are pretty good when it comes to innovation. They can claims to be the most innovative large company out there.
Magic Leap: Google bets big on augmented reality firm
Google is making a big bet on augmented reality, leading a $542 million investment in a shadowy startup called Magic Leap, based in Dania Beach, Florida. ..... The investment, one of the largest ever made by Google ..... Magic Leap - which superimposes animated digital imagery over what someone sees with the naked eye - ...... the little known company outlines an ambitious vision for displaying rich interactive graphics alongside what people see naturally, using what it calls a dynamic digitized lightfield signal. ..... "Magic Leap is an eclectic group of visionaries, rocket scientists, wizards, and gurus from the fields of film, robotics, visualization, software, computing, and user experience" ...... Magic Leap's chief executive, Rony Abovitz. "Magic Leap is going beyond the current perception of mobile computing, augmented reality, and virtual reality. We are transcending all three, and will revolutionize the way people communicate, purchase, learn, share and play."Google Invests Heavily in Magic Leap’s Effort to Blend Illusion and Reality
hammerhead sharks will swim through your office, elephants will fit in the palm of your hand and dragons will fly among the birds...... landed Google as its biggest investor. ..... Valuing Magic Leap at about $2 billion, the $542 million cash infusion from Google and other investors immediately vaulted the shadowy start-up into the upper echelons of young technology companies....... Ma gic Leap’s soaring valuation is based on little more than an ambitious vision and some nascent code. Magic Leap, which is based far from Silicon Valley in the suburbs of Miami, has no revenue — and no products currently on the market....... Details about Magic Leap’s plans remain sketchy. ..... Seahorses float above children in a schoolroom. A yellow submarine hovers near an outdoor promenade. An astronaut walks through a train station. ....... an ambitious vision for displaying rich interactive graphics alongside what people see naturally, using what it calls a dynamic digitized lightfield signal. ...... “Magic Leap is going beyond the current perception of mobile computing, augmented reality and virtual reality” ..... “We are transcending all three, and will revolutionize the way people communicate, purchase, learn, share and play.” ........ augmented reality could become a new platform — one that he argued could outstrip mobile devices in popularity. He compared the potential advancements to the rise of cinema: a new way of seeing the world. In this case, the start-up’s technology allows highly realistic graphics to appear alongside real-life objects. ........ Magic Leap is better coordinated with how the human eye and brain process images, making the computer graphics feel, and move, more naturally. ......... the technology could be applied to an array of other applications, creating a real-life equivalent to the magical newspaper from the “Harry Potter” books. ....... “For a while, we thought it was technically impossible, and then financially impossible,” he said. “Now it’s technically and financially possible.” ......... With more than $60 billion in the bank, Google cannot seem to find enough ways to invest its money. Google Ventures, the company’s venture capital arm, has invested in diverse companies including Blue Bottle Coffee and Uber, the on-demand taxi service. ....... The tech giant has spent much of the last two years trying to gain entry to essentially everything with an Internet connection ....... Google and Facebook ....... “They’re willing to take risks on the belief that their business will not be around forever” ...... “an eclectic group of visionaries, rocket scientists, wizards and gurus from the fields of film, robotics, visualization, software, computing and user experience”Magic Leap raises $542 million Series B to bring realistic augmented reality to life
It announced a $542 million Series B round today, raising its total funding to date to $592 million. ....... Magic Leap has yet to show the public a product. ..... Right now, most augmented reality involves a semi-transparent screen floating in your field of view. It doesn’t cover the entirety of what you can see, and it’s rare that it actually interacts with reality. ........ That kind of augmented reality takes some intense computing and advanced graphics. I have yet to see a headset and software demonstrated at that level from any company. ...... if it works, Magic Leap is coming for just about every industry ...... “[Magic Leap] will revolutionize the way people communicate, purchase, learn, share and play”Google takes big leap of faith in next-gen augmented reality tech
"cinematic reality." ..... Such "reality" will supposedly produce a more realistic 3D experience than anything else created so far. The company is reportedly working on hardware and software that can deliver augmented reality, including adding computer-generated images as an overlay onto what people can already see. ...... An interesting thing to note is this funding is being led by Google and not Google Ventures or Google Capital. As such, Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps at Google, will join the board at Magic Leap. ...... an elephant hovering in someone's hands or a submarine that is floating around in a city. ....... "It's one of the few things I've ever experienced in my life where I came out and said, 'This changes everything. This is a marker of the future.' " ...... "The space program had Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, and we're in our Apollo phase," continued Abovitz. "We know that space travel is possible. We're in the middle of full-blown product development and commercialization."
