We’ve reported a few stories about Magic Leap so far, the innovative American startup which has been promising a new future for extended reality. The company earned it’s position in the marketplace with a head-mounted virtual display known as Magic Leap One, which superimposed computer imagery over real-world objects. The result was a unique experience unlike anything else.
The only problem? Customers didn’t fall in love with Magic Leap straight away. It seemed that the incredible headset the company had spent so many years building just wasn’t suitable for the consumer market.
This year, the previous CEO of Magic Leap, Rony Abovtiz, announced that the company had raised an incredible $350 million in new funding. However, he also announced that he was stepping down as the leader of the business. Magic Leap followed up on this announcement by saying that its new CEO would be former Microsoft exec, Peggy Johnson.
Preparing for a New Future
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Peggy Johnson[/caption]
It’s been a rough transition in the last few years for Magic Leap. When the product failed to earn the attention of the consumer market, the company began shifting to the enterprise instead. Even with the extra funding this year, the company had to lay off a huge number of its staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The valuation of the company dropped from $6.4 billion in 2019, to only $450 million in the course of just 6 months. The business also went through a massive restructuring process. Peggy Johnson took the role of CEO, and new experts joined the crew in the form of Jose Baltazar, Walter Delph, Ana Lang, and John Doherty. The new executive team could be just what Magic Leap needs.
Johnson was the Microsoft Executive Vice President of Business Development before working with Magic Leap. She was also the head of its venture capital fund, M12. According to Johnson, she actually reached out to Abovitz about taking over when he announced he would be stepping down.
According to Peggy, current-generation mixed reality could be comparable to the early smartphone and computing tech that many of us encountered many years ago.
Is There a Market for Magic Leap?
The mixed and augmented reality environment did experience a boom in the mid 00’s, but many AR companies have started to change their focus or shut down completely. More recently, Bose started to abandon its plans for creating audio-based mixed reality glasses. Google also acquired consumer AR startup, North, and ended plans for a new next-gen pair of North glasses.
