At Magic Leap’s developer conference last month, the company announced they were ready to throw down serious cash to developers to build apps for their new AR headset, Magic Leap One. Now, the company has unveiled the specifics of the Independent Creator Program, which aims to give individual developers and teams up to $500,000 in grant money to start their ML One projects.

Update (November 15th, 2:50 PM ET): According to a Variety report, Magic Leap chief content officer Rio Caraeff says the grant fund is projected to be an “eight-figure program.”

There’s no clear ceiling on how much Magic Leap has earmarked for the development fund (see update), but it’s safe to say it’s pretty high considering the company is offering between $20,000 and $500,000 per project to populate their content store.

This, the company says on the program’s site, comes along with developer and marketing support, and also a Magic Leap One headset itself.

Image courtesy Magic Leapmagic le

The company underlines the fact that the program is a grant, and not an exclusivity deal. “You own your IP and publishing is not exclusive to Magic Leap,” the company writes.

Applications are now open starting today and continue until December 15th, 2018. The review process and resultant funding will be offered on an ongoing basis through February 15th, 2019. The company says once developers have built, submitted and launched their apps that the best experiences will be showcased at L.E.A.P. Conference in 2019.

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Magic Leap hasn’t been bashful about funding content thus far in terms of dollars spent, although up until now they’ve only worked with premium developers including Weta Workshop, Insomniac Games, Rovio, the NBA, and a number of enterprise-focused developers including SketchUp, Wacom, and Onshape.

This marks the company’s first big push to fill out their content store for a future consumer launch—when that will happen, we just can’t say.

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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.
  • jj

    only one small painless payment of $2,250 for the device needed to enter this!
    jk i know its for devs and companies and 2k isnt much in those regards

  • SourMagic

    So that’s where all the investor’s money went.

    • jj

      they had 500 mill in investors and 500 mill more capital placing them over 1 billion. so yeah even 10 mill is only 1/100th of their financing.

      • dk

        it was 2.3 billion from investors and than as far as I remember ….at&t had undisclosed investment ….the latest I’ve heard was around 2.6 billion ….and the company is evaluated at over 6 billion ….there r plenty of articles about it https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organizations/funding_total/magic-leap

        • jj

          daaaaaaamnnnn well if you type into google “magic leap investment amount”

          you get this

          “Magic Leap, an augmented reality company that has never shipped or even shown a product, has just gotten a $502 million investment on top of its nearly $1.4 billion in existing funding.Oct 22, 2017

          so sure, as you so stodgily pointed out, there are plenty of article talking about their investments and thats what i was quoting from as well.

          • dk

            hmm what do u mean ….u r quoting from a 2017 article …did u not see my link where every investor and their money is listed (except the undisclosed at&t investment) …….I was just saying that it’s not 1b …it’s way more

          • jj

            yeah thats crazy, with 1 billion i was like o.o
            but then 2 billion i was like O.O

          • dk

            yeah apparently these big companies …really want to invest in ar ….and for them 500 million is apparently not a huge amount

  • Kenji Fujimori

    All that cash they have and hardly any sales, two and two go together

  • JesuSaveSouls

    Good idea but get with disney and port that mirage ar jedi challenges over too.

  • Ellon Musk

    I thought developers would be jumping all over the opportunity to be a part of this products future. Shows how much a hype Magic Leap is

    • jj

      barely any devs want to fork out 2k to make apps nobody else is ever going to use. whos going to play them? other devs who could afford this pile of crap?

      • Ellon Musk

        exactly my thoughts. it was hyped for the loans, now they will underdeliver and it will flop

  • Hivemind9000

    Until Magic Leap lay out a clear roadmap that shows how they are going to get the ML One down to a reasonable price point and better specs for general consumers sometime in the not-too-distant future, no serious consumer-oriented developers are going to touch this. Perhaps a few who treat this as a cash grab and don’t care about the market size…?

    It’ll be a good deal if you’re targeting commercial/industry clients (just like Hololens developers).

  • RJH

    Is this $500k the money (our money) that they raised over the course of their hugely protracted (and profitable) fund-raising campaign(s)?

    • jj

      yes it is