Magic Leap, the augmented reality headset manufacturer, has added another couple hundred million dollars to its Series D investment round, this time $461 million led by The Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment arm, Tech Crunch reports.

According to the report, the Saudi Arabian fund raised $400 million of the investment, while Magic Leap says “new investors” made up the remaining amount.

Magic Leap most recently took on an unspecified amount from German media company Axel Springer, producers of several German magazines including Die Welt and Bild, as well as English language online publications such as Business Insider.

Magic Leap started their Series D financing round back in October last year, taking on $502 million lead by Singapore-based finance firm Temasek Holdings. Not counting whatever sum Alex Springer invested in the company, Magic Leap has taken on a total of $2.3 billion in funding.

“The Magic Leap team and I are happy to welcome The Public Investment Fund and the other new investors to the Magic Leap family.” said CEO Rony Abovitz in a statement. “We look forward to having them join us on our journey to build an amazing future.”

Magic Leap says they’re on track to release Magic Leap One sometime in 2018, the company’s AR headset unveiled in December last year. No pricing or specific release date has been made public at this time.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Gato Satanista

    They really have a huge knowhow in getting huge amounts of money. Hope that this translates to the product

    • David Herrington

      So I’d like to formally announce my new product, which will be called “Magic Bleap.” I will now be taking investments into my personal bank account for those that would like to invest.

      I make no real promises as to what this device can do but I can tell you it will be life-changing to me… I mean you.

      • omegaxeno

        great, where do I invest?

      • Laurence Nairne

        Will I look ridiculous wearing it and become homeless from the expense of purchasing one?

        No deal if not.

      • Annie

        Google pays now 97 US dollars/h to complete some jobs working off of a home computer .. Work only for just few hours & spend greater time together with your loved ones … You can catch this super post!on Tuesday I bought a new Subaru Impreza just after making $6876 past month .it’s certainly the best work however you will no longer forgive yourself if you don’t take a look at it.!jh802j:➧➧➧➧ http://GooglePlayBestFreelanceEasyJobs/getpay/$98/everyhour… ♥♥j♥♥♥o♥♥k♥♥♥y♥♥j♥i♥♥♥u♥♥t♥c♥♥♥k♥♥♥q♥d♥♥♥u♥♥♥p♥l♥♥d♥♥♥r♥♥♥l♥♥t♥♥♥k♥♥g♥♥e♥♥k♥l♥u::::::::!ag282d:el

      • AnnoyedAnonymous

        Are you offering a bridge for sale too?

      • Jerald Doerr

        Awesome! Just make sure you get Magic Johnson to sponsor instead of Shaq!

        We just Magic Dicked you out of all your money.

  • Facts

    These investors better get their refund, by looking at pictures of the magic leap optics I can tell the field of view will be small making it another augmented reality fail.

    • Lucidfeuer

      This is not how current AR headsets work if by the optics you mean lenses. However if the lightfield screen ends being the purplish square we see inside the lens, I think this is quite big compared to other AR headset we’ve seen.

      Well it’s still a non-product don’t get me wrong, but “investors getting refund” is an odd statement, it doesn’t work this way….

      • The description of a “VHS tape at arms length” does not bode well for the ML hype, especially when MS will announce their V2 of the Hololens with wider FOV, faster processor at less cost. If MS can sell it for less than $2000, they will have no problem making this the standard in XR wear. Frankly having used Hololens for period of time, it really was groundbreaking design. Sadly a little more than I wanted to spend for early technology.

    • brubble

      Last check was the FOV is about the size of…wait for it…… a VHS tape….half an arms length away. Sounds absolutely mind blowing hey?! smh

      • Facts

        A vhs tape really, are you being sarcastic, that’s a heads up display not AR I’ll wait another 3 years for true AR

      • dk

        btw if u measure the angle of the fov of a vhs at that distance …it puts it at exactly the same as the hololens …..other people’s calculations put it between 40 and 50
        ….just saying …and I get that u r most likely joking

        • brubble

          ;D

        • I came up with as well. In fact the next version of the MS Hololens will easily exceed this. Frankly MagicLeap in my mind, is already dead. They only thing they are doing is amassing a portfolio of IP to sue anyone who actually has the technical experience to make this actually happen.

  • JJ

    Maybe they should use this money to just start from scratch cause that thing looks hideous.

  • Lucio Lima

    They could draw inspiration from the movie ‘Ready Player One’

  • Mei Ling

    Honestly who gives the damn about how they look when the most important thing is how they perform and how they fit. If you’re only concerned about the style then this technology is clearly not for you. Move along please.

    • Foreign Devil

      I know right? People don’t get that hung up on how their PS4 or XBOX looks. they care about how it performs.

      • Groo Gadgets

        People don’t wear their PS4 or XBOX on their face do they? This Magic Leap stuff smells very similar to Star Citizen a few years ago. The only news stories coming out are all about how much money they are raising. Seems like they are in a rush to grab as much investor money as they can before the product releases and everyone realises it was a dud all along…

        • Laurence Nairne

          I have a theory that they are saving to purchase an island in international waters so they can bury themselves and wait for the anger at false promises to all blow over.

        • Foreign Devil

          no and people don’t generally wear their Rift or Vive HMD when they go out in public shopping or visiting friends do they? It’s all about performance not fashion.

    • Actually it is only because ML has made it an issue in previous statements. Along with the cost to buy this, which I don’t think will less than $5000, this is problem with MagicLeap — a lot of rhetoric with very, very little substance.

  • brubble

    So I have this “dream”…. its a vast open universe with spaceships and planets where 1000s of players roam free, literally creating their own story. Currently selling Jpegs of concept ships and plots of virtual land, starting @ $200 a piece. Any takers?

    • Hivemind9000

      This is not the “money for nothing” thread you were looking for, Chris Roberts. Move along!

      • brubble

        HAHA. These arent the neckbeards Im looking for.

    • omegaxeno

      Pretty sure thats how people imagine No Man Sky before release

      • JJ

        Actually i’m pretty sure this is Start Citizen creation in a nutshell

  • Yosarin Blake

    My understanding is that Magic Leap uses light field emitter technology rather that two images at different angles that your brain squashes together, which is the case in all VR headsets atm. This means Magic Leap will create a totally natural and effortless viewing experience, which you can enjoy as long as you like, as compared to the eye and brain strain of current VR headsets that I understand limit a lot of people to short stints in VR. As a total VR lover and enthusiast (and owner of the VIVE, and soon to be owner of a PIMAX 8K), I can see how a Magic Leap type system will completely rule the roost in a few years, especially when they move on to pure VR (not AR) setups. THIS is why they receive so much funding. Because (eventually!) their system will completely eclipse current VR / AR tech.

    • dk

      lol no….. it’s the same wave guides u have in the hololens u still see 2 images …..what they have is 6 layers of wave guides approximating variable depths of focus …..meaning u can focus on a virtual object in your hand and the hand will be in focus and virtual objects far behind the hand will be out of focus just like real objects at that distance …..we’ll see how well it works

      • JJ

        Thank you, not to mention you mind is doing the melding of these color layer not the headset . So as we’ve seen on the Hololense and the Daqri headset, if you move the images to fast you see each color separate a little around their edges. So hopefully the leap can address some of these issues but as well these issues might be wired into humans.

      • And Rolling Stone magazine’s article even made mention that this feature that is suppose to set it apart from other viewing technology, did not seem to actually work. Having spent sometime in looking at NVIDIA study/prototype with Stanford on layered waveguides and the huge issue to to split depth fields (x2) at significant resolution and insure the frame-rate is significant to create solid image with no blur. This is why specialized rack/cart mounted equipment has been needed in the past with the ML prototype. So what I want to know is what processor/SOC is being used (my bet is on an NVIDIA TX2 variant) to take this complex processing to an extremely mobile belt attachment.

        • dk

          yeah in the article it’s definitely not clear if it was working and they definitely didn’t have specific demos showing it off ….even if they have some approximation of variable depths with just 6 layers and the nano structures of the stack like some patents suggest ….it’s not clear how well it will work ….and if they don’t have even that…. it will be pretty lame
          …there were some rumours that the platform is somewhat obsolete
          …and the next hololens will definitely be pretty cool

    • Icebeat

      Amen

  • Jeremiah

    SA are running out of oil soon, if anyone was wondering why they are diversifying.

    • Smokey_the_Bear

      It’s not so much that they are running out, but the world is beginning it’s shift to electric transportation, which will financially crush any country that’s “all in” on oil, so they are diversifying to stay alive.

      • Jeremiah

        You’ll see what I mean, they’re not the only Islamic country hiding their low oil supplies.

  • ymo1965

    All this funding sounds jolly good but how much is the final product gonna be? £2k? And they call the Vive Pro a ‘Prosumer’ and Enterprise product.

  • JJ

    is there an echo in here…?

  • brandon9271

    I hate these guys…

  • Jerald Doerr

    So I don’t understand.. Are thay all donations or will the cost get paid back to inverters buy customers?

  • New money for new photoshopped pictures

  • Still waiting for any information on when I will be able to purchase and receive my developer kit. This company is a far cry from Oculus, Valve, HTC/Vive, Google, Sony or Microsoft when it comes to making early availability to the tools needed to create content. No need to go into why this is so important.