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Magic Leap announced this week at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia its latest AR hardware plans along with a renewed partnership with Google.

The News

Google and Magic Leap announced in May 2024 a “strategic technology partnership” to secure key technology needed to make compact AR glasses. We’ve heard little about the partnership since, however now Magic Leap has provided an update.

The Plantation, Florida-based AR unicorn today announced it’s extending the partnership through a three-year agreement with Google that will position it as “an AR ecosystem partner to support companies building glasses,” including work on display systems, optics, and system integration for AR devices.

Additionally, Magic Leap and Google showed off an AI glasses prototype at FII, which the companies say will serve as a prototype and reference design for Google’s Android XR ecosystem. Android XR is designed to run on a variety of XR devices, including the recently launched Samsung Galaxy XR (ex-Project Moohan), as well as future AR glasses, and smart glasses from a variety of hardware partners, including Samsung, Warby Parker, and Gentle Monster.

“The demo shows how Magic Leap’s technology, integrated with Google’s Raxium microLED light engine, brings digital content seamlessly into the world,” Magic Leaps says. “The prototypes worn on stage illustrate how comfortable, stylish smart eyewear is possible and the video showed the potential for users to stay present in the real world while tapping into the knowledge and functionality of multimodal AI.”

Note: It’s uncertain whether the prototype above is new, or actually Google’s previously teased smart glasses seen at Google I/O this year. We’ve reached out to Magic Leap and will update when it’s more clear.

“Magic Leap’s optics, display systems, and hardware expertise have been essential to advancing our Android XR glasses concepts to life,” said Shahram Izadi, VP & GM of Google XR. “We’re fortunate to collaborate with a team whose years of hands-on AR development uniquely set them up to help shape what comes next.”

Founded in 2010, Magic Leap promised to revolutionize AR with its lightfield display technology, raising over $4 billion in funding from major investors like Google, Alibaba, Qualcomm, AT&T, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and Axel Springer.

Its first headset, Magic Leap 1 (also stylized as ‘One’) however underperformed and struggled to find a viable consumer market when it launched in 2018, forcing the company to pivot to enterprise and medical applications. This came alongside a leadership shakeup that would see founder Rony Abovitz step down as CEO in 2020, making way for Pegggy Johnson, formerly of Qualcomm and Microsoft.

A year after the enterprise release of Magic Leap 2 in 2022, Johnson would be replaced as CEO by Ross Rosenberg, previously of Bain Capita, Danaher, First Solar and Belden. Rosenberg currently leads the company.

My Take

At the release of Magic Leap 1 in 2018, and consequently the height of consumer PC VR headsets, Magic Leap held conferences, courted influencers and media, and funded a fleet of expensive third-party apps aimed at gamers and casual users. The world didn’t even have a viable standalone VR platform yet, and Magic Leap was hoping to kickstart AR headsets—not glasses—as the next dominant consumer computing platform.

The company also presumably burned through a good portion of its multi-billion dollar runway in the process to launch something that the market, developers, and even Magic Leap itself didn’t really seem ready for. I, like most in the early days of XR, was skeptical. Too many pie in the sky (or ‘whale in the sky’) marketing videos. Never enough substance or clear direction to tell where things were really going for the company.

What’s more, Magic Leap 1 didn’t even really outperform Microsoft’s staunchly enterprise HoloLens AR headset, or deliver on its promises of “lightfield photonics” to allow for multiple focal planes. Its first ‘Creator Edition’ ML1 headset contained a waveguide-based display with two focal planes. Nothing revolutionary, and at $2,300, too expensive of a platform for most consumer-focused studios to stomach.

But it did provide Magic Leap 2 to enterprise in 2022, which is exactly where it should have focused the entire time. But going that route from the get-go would have been less flashy, and probably less capable of attracting historic levels of funding.

Barring all else, Magic Leap’s greatest sin was undoubtedly being a decade too early. Only now it seems that companies are building out the requisite customized chips, waveguides, light engines, everything, and slimming it down into a digestible form factor. And big players like Meta, Google, Samsung and (likely, but unconfirmed) Apple are hoping to use smart glasses first before serving up anything AR remotely targeted at consumers.

In the end, there’s a good reason Magic Leap is still kicking, even this late in the game. The company’s latest funding round was a $590 million debt financing deal struck in January 2024, led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. It seems to have the operational cash on hand, and has been rightfully deflated to make better use of it. That, and there’s still real know-how at Magic Leap to go along with a genuine pile of patents, which I suspect the company is leveraging as it makes its second big transition: from enterprise headset platform creator to glorified AR parts supplier to a company that could really play a big part in the coming AR glasses revolution.