What does Magic Leap do or make? That is still unclear. Even on its own website, the company isn't dropping any helpful hints.
Google, along with a group of other investors, has nonetheless poured $542 million in funding into Magic Leap, an enigmatic tech startup with an ambiguous reason for existence.
"Magic Leap is an idea. An idea that computing should be shaped and forged to work for us: our life, our physiology, our connected relationships. That exploring human creativity is as great an adventure as exploring space. It's an idea based in the belief that people should not have to choose between technology or safety, technology or privacy, the virtual world or the real world," the company website's About Us section reads.
If you're left scratching your head after reading that description, you're not alone.
There are crumbs of specificity to go by. However, none of these totally explains what Magic Leap is all about. The company claims to have created technology that it calls Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal. There's no real explanation of what it is or what it does. However, that hasn't stopped the company from declaring it to be "magical." All we know about Digital Lightfield is that it is biomimetic. It may be related to making synthetic products that mimic biological substances like enzymes.
The secrecy has only inspired the Internet to start digging. While the company has been mostly successful in staying mum about its supposed breakthrough, it has not been able to plug all the leaks.
According to a report from Re/code, the company is working on a wearable device, possibly in the form of glasses, that will project optical illusions.
"Sources say a key part of Magic Leap's plans involves a wearable device that will track users' eyeballs and project images onto them. We're also told the company intends to use an infrared camera similar to the Microsoft Kinect to create a 3-D understanding of the world around the wearer -- so the virtual objects can appear to go both in front of and behind things," the article read.
The intrigue has not been enough to drive investors away. Aside from Google, other firms that have signed on include Legendary Entertainment, Qualcomm Ventures, private equity firm KKR, Obvious Ventures, Vulcan Capital and venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz.
As part of the deal, Google will plant an inside man into the Magic Leap leadership. Sundar Pichal, Google's senior vice president for Android, Chrome and Apps, will join Magic Leap's board of directors.
