magic leap elephant — An early concept teaser photo from Magic Leap

Report: Magic Leap Raising Series D Investment, Could Value Company at $6–8 Billion

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May 26, 2017

For a company that’s showed almost no one what they’re building, Magic Leap has been phenomenally successful at fundraising. The company has previously raised a staggering $1.4 billion, and if a recent report turns out to be true, they’re about to raise even more, reportedly pushing the company’s valuation to $6–8 billion.

According to Backchannel, a young tech publication owned by WIRED Media Group, Magic Leap is seeking a Series D financing, and though it hasn’t closed yet, Alibaba will lead the round (as it did in the company’s Series C). It’s unclear how much additional capital the company plans to raise, but Backchannel’s Jessi Hempel—who has visited Magic Leap’s Florida HQ—says it will value the company between $6–8 billion, pushing the startup well beyond ‘Unicorn’ status (a startup achieving a $1+ billion valuation).

That’s an extremely rare feat for any startup, but even more surprising for a company that has not launched or even announced any products.

To date the company has done little more than tease what it’s building, but it seems it will be some type of augmented reality headset and operating system environment that could be built on novel display technology that’s uniquely suited for augmented reality.

New Magic Leap Videos Shows AR Shopping and Voice Control

The purported new Series D round is in the works despite the company recently downplaying some of the hype following a bout of skeptical press spearheaded by a report from The Information at the end of 2016. It seems that press hasn’t dissuaded Alibaba, nor the celebrities the company has wooed as of late.

Get Schwifty!

Man they better have something going or this will go down in history as one serious scam…
- Raphael
  
  Shall we try logic. Do you invest millions in a tech company some years down the line if they have no product to show? The fact they’re still able to raise more investment means they have some impressive hardware to show albeit in secret with NDA.
  - OPMan
    
    Your logic seems to not always work. Plenty of secretive tech companies that had millions of dollars in investments and were either scams or failures with nothing impressive to show like Color Labs or the Hailo app and more. However, not of these failures totaled billions of dollars of investment so that is a huge difference where magic leap stands out among all other investments.
    - Raphael
      
      The level of funding still in progress suggests it’s more than a scam. Also projects can fail without being a scam.
      - Get Schwifty!
        
        Don’t get me wrong, I believe they have *something*; whether it’s worth anything that warrants the investment remains to be seen. Given their behavior and who the apparent pasts of their leadership it raises a lot of questions.
  - psuedonymous
    
    Counterpoint: Theranos.
  - Lucidfeuer
    
    Ah Raphael, so naïve and ignorant, or maybe hypocrite? No I believe just plain ignorant of the workings of economics.
    
    Try Bloombox.
    - Raphael
      
      Hello flappy. What is economics?
  - Bramagola
    
    The factor able to raise money doesn’t show anything other than their ability to raise money.
    
    one could look at Oculus and draw a same conclusion considering the fact that it was bought by Facebook for billions and really hasn’t moved that much in the market.
    
    the amount of hype built up around this company alone will carry you far into the future even if the product itself is a complete failure.
  - Sebastien Mathieu
    
    logic?, billions more have been invested in the housing market, subprime loan anyone?? who used logic when the market falled in 2008??? billions attract billions until billions are no more….
    - Raphael
      
      Oh fuck, what does that have to do with AR tech investment? Are you seriously that dumb?
      
      Banks lose your money all the time. We’re talking about AR hardware not banks giving mortgages to poor people.
      
      So i ask again… What evidence do you have that this project is a scam?
      - lucky
        
        It’s well known that all released videos about what can do magic leap’s glasses are not done by theses devices but simulated and rendered as it was done by it. So, if the hardware is awsome, why don’t they show true examples ?
        I’m ok to say that there is realy something strong device behind. But, showing nothing don’t help people !
      - Raphael
        
        I’m not a fan of closed secretive development. They are promoting this hardware for consumers but it’s top secret? So if it’s secret why release promotional videos. So I’m not a fan of that method of running a business. I admire the route the star citizen team have taken. Documenting every stage of development including bug hunting.
        
        I think we should see this with hardware devs too when the product includes consumer entertainment market. So really i do understand why People get sick of hearing about this with no hardware to show.
        
        If it’s a consumer entertainment product… Let people know what’s going on or keep it completely secret and only have private investors signing NDA.
      - daveinpublic
        
        A billion dollars in funding doesn’t mean they’ll release something successful. Facebook put 2 billion in Oculus even though it wasn’t too incredible at the time.
      - Raphael
        
        I don’t think facebook regret octopusvr yet. It’s hard to raise billions in funding on a scam though. There must be some hardware they’re showcasing that helps bring further funding.
- Mei Ling
  
  They wouldn’t get this kind of investment if what they’re working on isn’t any good especially if it’s from a Chinese company like Alibaba who are usually quite picky on colossal investments. There’s obviously something going on in their labs that’s well beyond what other major companies like Microsoft are capable of – we know most of the details so far but Magic Leap is very secretive on revealing their “secret sauce”.
  - NooYawker
    
    High profile investors draw other high profile investors. Doesn’t mean they have anything better than any other Company working on AR.
    - Get Schwifty!
      
      Good point – they are prone to herd mentality like everyone else.
      - NooYawker
        
        Not that I blame them. For these billionaires to drop millions in an investment is like buying lunch for us.
  - Lucidfeuer
    
    That would be nice if we lived in a Marvel movie. But there’s no such thing as some abstract “secret sauce” in their labs that goes well beyond what Microsoft does, because neither of them do, scientists and researchers make-up the basic usable technologies, and Magic Leap R&D being better would require them almost making findings in fundamental research on lights, meta-materials, optics and physics which…never happens in companies for myriads of reasons.
    
    If you look at my comment above you will understand that this probably a speculative laundering scheme, although unlike bloombox they’ll probably actual have to release some product which of course, will have nothing revolutionary and thus as AR glasses in the 2010s, won’t succeed.
    - Billie
      
      I love “speculative laundering scheme” – brilliant! For Google to waste a billion on a Theranos of Cinematic Reality is a child’s play, they give out at least a few billion in their divorce settlements to ex wives…And Abovitz is giving out billions in attorney fees – no one gives a rat’s bottom to demand to see anything besides scammy promises of a loser founder.
    - Jack H
      
      Agreed on the first part, I could very well picture a scenario of sticking some liquid crystal variable lenses or switchable liquid crystal lenses at the waveguide output, or maybe basic active components in the waveguide for time-multiplexed integral display, or at worst a liquid lens after the display and then a mirror combiner…. But I just can’t believe that it would be something like a true photonic chip with for instance on-waveguide laser phased array beam-steering.
      - Lucidfeuer
        
        I didn’t get it all, but I think you are talking about way more advanced actually holographic lenses that are not on the horizon for a consumer product for at least 20-25 years. I think a realistic and practical way to go for AR glasses are lightfield lenses, but they’re nowhere near current VR headset specs, which are already too limited.
  - Billie
    
    Alibaba was scammed by Google’s greedy co-founders who gambled on it first. It is a shame they are deceiving Jack Ma. Magic Theranos’s CEO is incapable of making a working product, he is a moron, and he only managed to raise money because in 2015 EVERY MORON RAISED MONEY. Jack Ma must sue Abovitz for incompetence and fraud. Alibaba would be better off investing into Hololense or any other company that has real things to show.
  - Billie
    
    Theranos was super secretive, too! Had very similar big name investors, huge PR, billions of dollars raised! Elizabeth Holmes is now going to prison for fraud. And so should Abovitz.
    - Jonny Cook
      
      Do you have a citation for your claim that Elizabeth Holmes is going to prison for fraud? Because I can’t find anything indicating that is the case.
      - Mei Ling
        
        It’s called hyperbole.
      - Raphael
        
        I’ve never been to the hyperbole. Not a big football fan.
      - Jonny Cook
        
        No, hyperbole would be comparing Elizabeth Holmes to Hitler. What Billie stated was just a flat out lie.
      - Mei Ling
        
        “hyperbole would be comparing Elizabeth Holmes to Hitler.”
        
        That’s hilarious!
      - Lucidfeuer
        
        The degree of hypocrisy and disgusting flat-out lies from some people is frightening: http://fortune.com/2016/06/17/sam-waksal-theranos-scam/
        https://www.wired.com/2016/04/theranos-investigated-fraud-weird-private-company/
        http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-class-action-lawsuit
        
        While she is not “going to prison” as Billie overstated, Theranos was indeed investigated and condemned for fraud with what were risks for Holmes to get to prison as consequence.
        
        You’re just a hypocrite lier, and I will now assume that everything you say on these forums is a lie from now on.
      - Jonny Cook
        
        How am I a liar? Yes, she was investigated, but as of yet there is zero indication that she is going to prison, and from what I’ve read, most people don’t think she will.
        
        I was challenging the exact statement that she was going to prison, not questioning whether or not she was under investigation.
      - Lucidfeuer
        
        The way you framed your response indicated that you supported the zero-existence of any actual investigation or fraud.
      - Jonny Cook
        
        I specifically challenged the statement that Elizabeth Holmes was going to prison for fraud. Nothing I said indicated that I denied the fact that she had been investigated. That was an assumption you made.
    - Dynastius
      
      This is at another level entirely though. If this company doesn’t have something amazing, it will be the biggest investment failure I’ve ever seen. Theranos raised a total of less than $700 million during 9 rounds of funding. This company raised $1.4 billion in 3 rounds. (Not including this as yet incomplete round 4 rumor.) Also, most of the investors in Theranos were private investors, a couple companies (Bluecross / Blueshield and Walgreens), and a couple VCs whereas the companies behind MagicLeap are Google and Alibaba. Alibaba put in almost $800 million in round C and Google did a nearly $500 million round B. Those are some crazy big numbers for a company at this stage.
  - Bramagola
    
    I love how all these keyboard Warriors know how all these companies think and what they’re capable of and what they want I guess they’re just must be all be billionaires because they know how the market moves so why be here telling us how the market moves. Go make it move
    - Mei Ling
      
      I love how pathetic it is when random internet fuckers upvote themselves.
      - Bramagola
        
        Learn to troll better
      - Mei Ling
        
        Learn not to be a pathetic internet loser.
- Steve Aukstakalnis
  
  Companies like Google, Alibaba, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, etc… do not continue to pour money at this level into an enterprise unless they see a reasonably clear path to a profitable exit.
  
  This is not a sprint. Magic leap is in a marathon.
  - NooYawker
    
    I’m sure AR was new and exciting a few years ago but today there’s plenty of companies working it. And MS already has a developer model out.
    - Bramagola
      
      and Microsoft is not the only one developer Hardware out. These guys lost the launch market 3 years ago, and the longer they wait to jump their 1.0 product out other companies will have product version 3.0 on the market
      - NooYawker
        
        I didn’t say MS is the only one, there’s many AR companies working on products. Which is why Magic Leap isn’t going to wow anyone, they’re just another company working on AR. But no one has a commercial product released yet so no one owns or lost the market yet.
- Shepheard ADI
  
  Well it’s obviously not a scam. The technology exists and they have demo’d it several times. The big question is how will they bring this to market in a way that justifies 6 billion :)
Noah Schiffman

wow. Road2VR super late the party. odd.
Facts

This will be a bigger fail than Google glass, don’t trust the hype
- Raphael
  
  Ahhh.. I see… and u are who? Why should we trust you over billion dollar investment? Do u see where I’m going and why I would question your advice?
  
  Can u show us your credentials and the data you have available that led to your conclusion?
  - Ian Shook
    
    Because he’s shown as many products as Magic Leap maybe? And since when do we need credentials to have an opinion on something? Even non-chefs known when their chicken is burnt.
    - Raphael
      
      Ummm, no. He’s shown as many products as magic leap? Magic leap actually have a product. The fact that you haven’t been shown it is irrelevant. He hasn’t raised billions. All he’s done is come here and say its a scam and not to trust it. Something is not a scam on the basis of it taking a long time and being hidden from the public. Morons have been saying the same about star citizen. It’s nice that you love the guy enough to come and defend him but you have to do much better than that.
  - Bramagola
    
    well in the case of you questioning his Bonafides, can we have yours?
- Raphael
  
  To put it another way… “Facts” has shown us no facts just a fact-less statement that we should trust his lack of facts over billion dollar investment… I’m very doubtful.
  - Bramagola
    
    well you haven’t shown us any fact that it’s not a scam. You’re in the same boat as the person thalt you disparaged: you got about zero facts.
    - Raphael
      
      There seems to be a childish mentality that something is a scam if it takes more than 2 years of development and receives a lot of funding. We see this mentality in rage muppets saying “star citizen is a scam”, “it will never be finished”. When you look at it without child rage you see the level of artistry and work that’s going in to the game and how it has already reached a level of detail unseen before in space games (or any games). But that’s my perception based on my ex programming/design days.
      
      Something is not a scam because it takes years, billions of investment and isn’t demonstrated to the angry rage kiddy masses.
      
      Now it could be the whole project will fall apart. It could be a scam. To assume anything is nonsensical. I don’t assume the project will complete nor do I assume it’s a scam. It’s called having an open mind. And yes… that person I disparaged because he gave us his idiot conclusion with no apparent evidence for his conclusion.
      - Ian Shook
        
        I’d just like to say that I don’t agree with ‘Facts’. I think this is a whole different beast – and a company has to show something, release something, and sell something in order for it to have a chance to fail like google glass did. I also don’t think we can even compare google glass to this hypothetical Magic Leap product – they’re just meant to be different products all together. I just think that ‘Facts’ didn’t put any info out there that we even need to analyze, it was pretty obvious it was just an opinion and he has nothing to back it up. If he’d claimed he worked at XYZ and knows a guy working on ABC and and he heard some information, then maybe we could say ‘show us the proof’ but really it’s just his unsupported opinion at this time. I think I beat this dead horse to death.
      - Raphael
        
        “This will be a bigger fail than Google glass, don’t trust the hype” << I just have an issue with automated gibberish.
        
        "and a company has to show something, release something, and sell
        something in order for it to have a chance to fail like google glass
        did." << Yes… or what? They are at a stage where they are showing to investors and some journalists. Not at the public showing stage. Is that a crime? Are they automatically guilty of fraud if they don't show something within a few years?
        
        I just think we live in an age where people rant and complain about pretty much everything.
        
        We have gen 1 consumer VR and some are complaining and saying gen 2 is being held back and denied them.
        
        Star citizen "is a scam" because it's been n years and it's still not ready. Well take a look back muppets… Stalker, HL2 and Prey were 3 games people said were never coming.
      - Bramagola
        
        your argument is a fail because Star Citizen is actually released in Alpha Beta State and it’s not hidden away waiting for more investors to see only.
        
        or is the 30-plus gigabytes on my drive that’s called Star Citizen fake?
        
        I can tell you what is currently vaporware that would be magic leap
      - Raphael
        
        So anything that’s hidden and taking billions to develop and a number of years is a scam?
        
        See I happen to think that mentality is just based on childish rage. You hate it because it’s not being given to you now.
        
        Show some actual proof of it being a scam. Without proof for or against there is a 50/50 chance but in reality the odds are lower of it being a fail
      - Bramagola
        
        I don’t know who the hell you’re confusing me with but I never said I hated this product.
        
        I simply pointed out the failure in your logic to connect Star Citizen as being some equivalency investment to that of magic leap.
        
        One is a product that’s in the public space with public investors, well magic leap is a product that doesn’t exist in any format in any public space nor has any public view on it.
        
        whether or not that means anything to the product itself or whether it even actually exist or whether it’s ever going to be a product who the hell cares.
        
        fact is it currently doesn’t exist it in any format that’s available on the same level of something like Star Citizen.
      - Raphael
        
        Yes, agree. Nevertheless there area people who rant at chris roberts and call star citizen a scam because it’s taking “too long” and costing “lots of money”. So while you recognize the two situations are different (star citizen is a very open project with devs sharing lots of information). Star citizen also gets hate and claims that it will never be finished or it’s just a scam.
        
        I don’t agree with the path chosen for this magic leap bollocks. Announcing it and bragging about funding but keeping it completely secret. The net effect is to piss people off.
        
        However…. I prefer logic of kiddy rage so i don’t subscribe to the belief that this is a scam (others have said) on the basis that is secret and costing lots of money and taking years.
- Walextheone
  
  That you don’t know. They don’t even have an official product with specs that you could weight pros and cons with
iNCEPTIONAL

It’s going to need the money if it intends to turn its largely hyperbole into a product that anyone other than a bunch of mega corporations give a crap about for uses that most of us simply won’t give a crap about. There’s basically zero chance of these guys releasing a meaningful and affordable consumer AR (or whatever the hell it actually is) device in the near future.
NooYawker

They’re going to release AR goggles. That’s it.
Lucidfeuer

I’m going to skip about the big sex discrimination scandal at Magic Leap because that’s not really the point here.

NO consumer technology is worth $8 billions investments with no possible projected revenues as big, which not possible for such a product, which with current technology and even with the best conception can be nothing more than a glorified HoloLens/Meta2 or rather ODG AR9.

However laundering and speculating on $8 billions investment is always worth doing for those people, since unlike the empty shell that is Apple relative to it’s infernally crazy over-speculative pool, since no-one knows about AR that’s the best front for this. Like Bloombox was, which is the pre-Magic Leap.

For those who don’t know or remember, Bloombox was the latest (or only that I know off) technology that was overly advertised with absolutely nothing but wind in a way so obviously biased (by Wired, still), with claims that made so little sense concurrent with existing energetic or chemical technologies, which when released ended up being a up pile of non-scientifical bullshit that were quickly debunked by actual chemical/physicists, that we then NEVER saw the color of the real product except for so called “boxes” we never had a credible explanation off but most importantly, a proof of these working. Well guess who got these boxes? Those who invested in it. Guess who? Mostly the same companies that “invested” in Magic Leap starting by Google.
- Billie
  
  You are correct, Lucidfeuer! Abovitz was ousted from his previous company for being inept and incompetent…Magic Fiasco settled with the the poor woman that Abovitz abused for almost a billion dollars to try make charges of sexism and sexual harassment go away. All Abovitz does is is sue former employees – just like you do if you based out of smelly swamp in Florida. Abovitz is spending all of his investor money on lawsuits and the abuse of people in the company is so outrages, it pales Foxconn Chinese workers abuse many times over…Abovitz is known to say that he NEVER has to deliver any product with billions they raised… Google – you invested in this sexist startup, shame on you! They conned Alibaba into investing, so it is not Alibaba’s fault they’ll eventually lose face in this Silicon Valley scam. Stop Theranos of AR and Abovitz’s shameless BS.
- Downvote King
  
  Are you saying that Bloom Energy Servers don’t actually work?
  - Lucidfeuer
    
    I’m saying they don’t even “exist”, and there’s never been an actual explanation for how their “sand cell” could ever work, let alone a concrete proof of results.
    - Downvote King
      
      How do so many companies own and use them if they don’t exist?
      - Lucidfeuer
        
        None of them bought one, they invested in an empty shell company for speculation laundering, and those who didn’t invest can’t even buy one (duh), because the actual technology and product doesn’t exist.
      - Downvote King
        
        I believe you’ve been misled. There are too many companies using them. Home Depot and Staples store locations employ them for backup power, that means your average ground level employee interacts with them, not to mention 3rd party contractors such as electricians. That’s no way to contain a conspiracy.
        
        Even if that many companies actually had illegal money to launder, they wouldn’t do it on US soil, and not with something so easy to verify as a fraud. The IRS would’ve locked the whole thing down long ago.
        
        The technology is also not particularly advanced, which is part of the reason they haven’t caught on in a huge way. It’s not sand, just a “sand-like” powder, similar to the kind in a normal AA battery – also known as a “dry cell”. They offer only a moderate increase in efficiency over standard diesel generators or hydrogen fuel cells. It’s a popular theory though.
      - Lucidfeuer
        
        “that means your average ground level employee interacts with them, not to mention 3rd party contractors such as electrician” that would certainly indicate that there is some maintenance, therefor some operations being done, however a friend of mine working next to one says nope…
        
        Maybe you have sources to state that these are being operated (which wouldn’t be an absolute proof, but a good element), and more importantly, that they have a real energetical output from these.
      - Downvote King
        
        There’s some links to the Home Depot stories at the bottom. I should probably mention that I work in the electrical trade. Home Depot states most of the energy for about 200 stores is coming out of Bloom Energy Servers. Any electrician working on that job would notice a discrepancy as large as you suggest. When installing and troubleshooting main service and/or backup power to a building multiple checks would verify the source and amount of power generated. It is possible that they would overstate the efficiency of their product, but if they simply did not work at all, there would be hundreds of electricians screaming about it by now.
        
        Looking at the spec sheets their technology doesn’t seem particularly groundbreaking, like I said – a lot was made for some reason of them using powder as their substrate for electron transfer, but it’s really just a fuel cell; neat, but not science fiction – dry powder cells have been around for a while. Their performance seems level with diesel generators or hydrogen fuel cells, nothing crazy. It’s not bad or anything, but nothing earth-shattering.
        
        http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/25/home-depot-cut-4800-cars-worth-of-emissions-with-bloom-energy-tech.html
        
        http://fortune.com/2016/06/24/apple-home-depot-turn-to-bloom-energy-as-its-tech-advances/
        
        https://corporate.homedepot.com/newsroom/renewable-sustainable-energy-fuel-cell-solar-wind
sfmike

Another tech company which seems to be better at raising capital that getting out a product. This is what creates a bubble that inevitably bursts. Prove me wrong please.
Foreign Devil

When a company starts wooing celebrities for investments and hype. . it starts sounding like “Scientology”.
TonyVT SkarredGhost

I think that in the end or it’ll be very disruptive or it will be an enormous failure…
kool

They gotta throw the best coke parties on the planet!