Magic Leap and Google have extended their partnership by 3 years, and showed a HUD glasses reference design in Saudi Arabia today.
What Is Magic Leap?
Magic Leap was one of the most hyped startups of the 2010s, with grand teases of bringing true augmented reality to the world backed by more than a billion dollars in funding.
In 2018 it finally launched a product, Magic Leap One, the first true AR headset sold to consumers. But its $2300 price and the narrow field of view inherent to shippable transparent optics (even today) meant it fell significantly short of sales expectations. The Information reported that Magic Leap’s founder, the CEO at the time, originally expected it to sell over one million units in the first year, but in reality it sold just 6000 units in the first six months.
In late 2019, around 16 months after launch, Magic Leap pivoted its strategy to enterprise and launched a new $3000 bundle with business warranty and support.
In late 2022 it launched Magic Leap 2 at $3300, focused on enterprise, leapfrogging HoloLens 2 with a taller field of view, brighter displays, and unique dynamic segmented dimming.
This brings you up to speed on the company before the Google partnership, which you can read about in the rest of the article.
Google was an initial investor in Magic Leap, leading a $542 million funding round back in 2014. Google CEO Sundar Pichai also joined the Magic Leap board at the time, but he stepped down in 2018, saying his schedule was too busy.
Last year, the two companies announced a “multi-faceted, strategic technology partnership” to combine Magic Leap’s “leadership in optics and manufacturing” with Google’s “technology platforms”.
David Heaney
Now, Magic Leap and Google have extended their partnership through a 3 year agreement.
“Magic Leap’s optics, display systems, and hardware expertise have been essential to advancing our Android XR glasses concepts to life,” said Shahram Izadi, Google’s VP of XR, in a prepared statement. “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.”
The two companies also showed off HUD glasses on stage at Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative Institute event today, which they describe as a prototype and reference design for hardware companies to enter the HUD glasses market.
(Magic Leap is majority owned by Saudi Arabia.)
Magic Leap and Google’s talk at Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative Institute.
The prototype incorporates a microLED display from Raxium, the startup which Google acquired in 2022, alongside a waveguide from Magic Leap, and the presentation saw Google pitch the same use cases it demoed at TED and I/O earlier this year.
That of course begs the question: how exactly does the Magic Leap waveguide differ from the one used in the prototype presented at those conferences?
“What makes this prototype stand out is how natural it feels to look through,” Izadi said in another prepared statement. “Magic Leap’s precision in optics and waveguide design gives the display a level of clarity and stability that’s rare in AR today.” That suggests it offers superior visual quality.
To be clear, this is not a prototype of a Magic Leap 3. Magic Leap seems to have pivoted from making devices to providing/licensing its waveguide technology to others.
Combined with this Google partnership, the pitch here is that any interested hardware company can easily launch their own high-quality HUD glasses, leveraging Magic Leap’s optics and Google’s software, to take on Meta Ray-Ban Display.
Meta Ray-Ban Display already does a lot of the things Google keeps teasing on stages. But Gemini is inarguably more advanced than Meta AI, for now at least, while Google Maps would offer vastly wider coverage than Meta’s limited navigation system. That’s not to say Meta doesn’t have its own advantages, such as integrating the largest communication platform on the planet (WhatsApp). But it does mean Google is set to bring serious competition.
David Heaney
So when might we see that competition arrive? No company has yet publicly committed to shipping Google-powered glasses with a HUD — Google described the display as “optional” when announcing the Warby Parker and Gentle Monster partnership — but South Korea’s The Financial News recently reported that Samsung plans to do so next year.
