The above is a screenshot from a Magic Leap demo from the end of last year, and as you can see there’s a pretty weird-looking Robot hovering underneath a desk in a rather mundane office environment. That’s the sort of magic that Magic Leap is all about, and the augmented reality firm has reportedly just secured yet another massive round of funding, and there’s word that the company is ready to finally announce something tangible soon. Seemingly out of nowhere, Magic Leap managed to obtain $500 Million in funding not too long ago, and this new round of funding could be worth more than $827 Million, valuing the relatively-unknown firm at a cool $3.7 Billion.
Magic Leap is a firm that wants to make augmented reality, that being the blending of the real world with fictional elements (such as our Robot friend up above), a very real reality and while the firm is still unknown to the majority of the outside world, those that have seen it seem mightily-impressed. With virtual reality taking off these days, it’s interesting to hear that augmented reality is enjoying something of a resurgence. Augmented reality itself isn’t new, apps have been offering up some form of augmented reality for the better part of a decade now, but Magic Leap aims to take this to new levels, and they’ve received a lot of attention from some big names. That $500 Million previously mentioned included money from Google, and the Chinese eCommerce juggernaut, Alibaba has apparently invested in the firm as well.
There’s rumor that Magic Leap are getting ready to announce something official very soon, but the company is keeping mum for now. The end goal is to place such technology into some sort of headset, similar to Microsoft’s HoloLens technology, but just what use this headset will have remains unclear. Regardless, it seems as though Microsoft, Oculus, Sony and Samsung just got a little more competition in the not-so-real-reality game. Hopefully, Magic Leap is ready to make a very real leap into the consumer world pretty soon. While we wait, there’s a demo embedded below for people to take a look at.