Google leads $542 million funding of mysterious augmented reality firm Magic Leap Google is leading a huge $542 million round of funding for the secretive startup Magic Leap, which is said to be working on augmented reality glasses that can create digital objects that appear to exist in the world around you. Though little is known about what Magic Leap is working on, Google is placing a big bet on it: in addition to the funding, Android and Chrome leader Sundar Pichai will join Magic Leap's board, as will Google's corporate development vice-president Don Harrison. The funding is also coming directly from Google itself — not from an investment arm like Google Ventures — all suggesting this is a strategic move to align the two companies and eventually partner when the tech is more mature down the road. "You’re in the room, and there’s a dragon flying around, it’s jaw-dropping." Magic Leap's technology currently takes the shape of something like a pair of glasses, according to The Wall Street Journal. This is all something that Google is eager to view the results of.
This Is The Demo That Magic Leap Was Going To Show At TED Before It Backed Out Virtual reality company Magic Leap has been eerily quiet since it announced its $542 million fundraising round last October, with heavyweights like Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and Google all participating. Now, for the first time in months, we finally have another glimpse of what the Florida-based VR startup has been cooking up in secret. This is the video of a real-world, first-person shooting game that Magic Leap says it was going to show at TED this week, before the company pulled out for reasons that are unclear. (Magic Leap declined to speak with the press about its absence.) It has lasers and robots and enough explosions to make Michael Bay shed a single, lens-flaring tear: In an email sent out to the press on Thursday, Magic Leap writes, "This is a game we’re playing around the office right now." Cool stuff?
Magic Leap Google Investment Google has led a $542 million investment in Magic Leap, a technology startup based in Florida, the company announced Tuesday morning. Magic Leap is a stealth company that describes itself as being a "developer of novel human computing interfaces and software." It just closed a $50 million-plus Series A round in February. The company is working on a new kind of augmented reality — which it calls cinematic reality — that it believes will provide a more realistic 3D experience than anything else that's out there today. Google, not Google Ventures, nor Google Capital, is making this investment for Google. Peter Kafka and Liz Gannes at Re/code reported on the company its raise previously. Not much is known about Magic Leap. Thomas Tull, CEO of Legendary, tells Fast Company: "It's so badass you can't believe it. You can get an idea of the company's vision on its website, where you see a video of a little elephant that looks as if it's hovering in someone's hands: Magic Leap Magic Leap Google
Why Tech Companies Are So Secretive About Self-Driving Cars Self-driving cars occupy the cultural space once dominated by flying cars. Both are a kind of shorthand for “the future.” But while flying cars have become a symbol of a technological promise left unrealized, driverless cars are widely believed to be inevitable in the coming decades. Leading tech companies say that bringing a fully autonomous car to the market is, in the words of the Tesla CEO Elon Musk, “a super high priority,” but it’s hard to know from the outside what most businesses are actually doing to get there. But in the fiercely competitive world of self-driving cars, Google’s strategy is the exception. A few side effects, actually. Until people know more specifically what Apple and Uber are trying to build, it’s hard to know what to ask first. “Google’s out there inventing this wonderful car but everything operates on this public infrastructure that the public pays for,” White said. “I’m not a technophobe, and I can see all kinds of benefits,” he added.
Revealed at Last: Magic Leap's Vision for Augmented Reality, in 32 Patent Illustrations A new patent application titled Planar Waveguide Apparatus with Diffraction Element(s) and System Employing Same sounds like a scientific snoozefest, but just also might provide a playbook for the next decade of interaction design. The surprisingly broad patent application was filed by Magic Leap, the secretive, Florida-based “Cinematic Reality” startup that recently received $542 million dollars of venture capital from Google, Legendary Entertainment, and Andresseen Horowitz. And its 180 pages represent the first detailed depiction of how the augmented-reality company believes we’ll use this mind-bending hardware. Magic Leap has been secretive about how their system works technically, but a plethora of disclosures in their filings provide the broad outline. The big question is how we’ll interact with devices like this. What’s the Future of UI? Magic Leap believes the future of user interface will come in the form of ordinary objects imbued with virtual, interactive powers.
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Reusability: The Key to Making Human Life Multi-Planetary “If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space.” --Elon Musk SpaceX believes a fully and rapidly reusable rocket is the pivotal breakthrough needed to substantially reduce the cost of space access. While most rockets are designed to burn up on reentry, SpaceX rockets are designed not only to withstand reentry, but also to return to the launch pad or ocean landing site for a vertical landing. First Stage Flight Testing In order to re-fly a Falcon 9 first stage, it must first return safely to Earth after delivering the second stage and payload to orbit. In 2014, SpaceX twice reentered a Falcon 9 first stage from space and landed it in the Atlantic Ocean. The video below shows the first stage’s landing following the Falcon 9 launch in April 2015.