Google has led an eclectic mix of investors in one of the biggest venture-capital deals in the technology industry to provide more than half a billion dollars to finance a secretive, visual-display start-up that uses a "dynamic digitized light field technology" that it says will revolutionize the entire computing industry.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Magic Leap announced in a statement that it just completed a series of funding led by Google that amounted to a final total of $542 million, giving the four-year-old company a valuation of $2 billion. The impressive string of investors also include Qualcomm's investment arm Qualcomm Ventures and Legendary Entertainments, which is known for creations such as "Godzilla" and "The Dark Knight." Venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Andreessen Horowitz and Obvious Ventures also participated.
Just what exactly Google has bet its money on isn't entirely clear, although Magic Leap's eccentric founder and CEO Rony Abovitz has dropped a few hints here and there enough to piece together a working picture of what his company has to offer.
"Magic Leap is going beyond the current perception of mobile computing, augmented reality and virtual reality," Abovitz says in a statement. "We are transcending all three, and will revolutionize the way people communicate, purchase, learn, share and play."
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Abovitz says his company is working on a lightweight wearable device that is equipped with a new visual technology that beams images right into the wearer's retina to produce 3D images that are projected with a sense of depth. In effect, the technology makes it appear as though the images the wearer is seeing are objects that are actually part of the physical world, whether they be tiny elephants springing out of someone's hands or a yellow submarine floating in mid-air.
An unnamed source tells Fast Company that the technology is called Dragonstone, in honor of the many geeky references from "Game of Thrones" to "Skyrim." Thomas Tull, CEO of Legendary Entertainment and who has spent his time immersing himself in the technology, let slip one word that gives us a pretty good idea of what it is: "glasses."
"It was incredibly natural and almost jarring - you're in the room, and there's a dragon flying around, it's jaw-dropping and I couldn't get the smile off of my face," Tulls tells the Journal.
It's clear how much the entertainment industry can stand to gain from such a technology, if it takes off in the near future as Abovitz promised. He says the technology will become "a creative hub for gamers, game designers, writers, coders, musicians, filmmakers, and artists." But Google, which wrote the check itself and not any of its investment arms, likely sees more potential for what Abovitz calls "cinematic reality."
Its investment could pave the way for a future partnership between Magic Leap and Google Glass, which is currently suffering from post-launch problems on how to gain acceptance into the mainstream. Unlike the Magic Leap technology, Google Glass relies on having images appear onscreen, which rouses the criticism that there is nothing users can do on Google Glass that they can't already do on their smartphones. If the new light field technology becomes commercially viable, Google could finally find the key to make Google Glass happen.
The investment is so important to Google that its own Sundar Pichai, senior vice president for Android, Chrome and Apps at Google, and Don Harrison, Google's vice president of corporate development, are joining Magic Leap's board of directors as observers.
Tuong Nguyen, consumer technology analyst at Gartner, believes the investment is part of Google's bigger strategy to enhance its products and drive more advertisements.
"I don't think Google's interested in what I call 'making boxes,'" Nguyen says. "This is an investment that's part of their grander strategy. They're trying to get more eyeballs, no pun intended. That's their business. They sell ads. By investing, they're saying, 'Let's see what else we can do with this.' Not to sell more boxes, but to grab those eyeballs somewhere down the line."
