
Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C - mosquito242
http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/09/augmented-reality-company-magic-leap-raising-827-million/
======
rsp1984
I've been working on AR and related technologies for almost the last decade
and I've been part of the first handful of people working on Google Glass.
Bottom line I've seen _a lot_ of promising AR technologies come and go.

My personal take on this is that they may indeed have some very good, if not
revolutionary, display technology. _However_ : The big, big obstacle to
delivering credible AR is latency. Contrary to VR, true see-through AR needs
to have total latencies (device motion --> display photon hits the retina) of
no larger than 10 - 15 ms max. The reason is that in see-through AR you're
essentially competing against the human visual system in latency and the HVS
is _very_ fast.

Moreover the HVS is also extremely good in separating visual content into
"layers". Whenever two things in your field of view don't move in perfect
continuity with their surroundings (as it is when there AR content overlaid
with latency) your brain will immediately separate them from one another,
creating the impression of layers, and, in the case of see-through AR,
breaking the AR illusion.

So right now I'm a semi-believer. Iff they can sort out the latency problem
_and_ deliver stable yet ultrafast tracking in a wide variety of conditions
(also by far not a trivial problem) then this has a bright future.

~~~
x0x0
Since you're an expert: what about these videos is hard? The things that
jumped out at me are:

1 - the robot moving behind the table leg (ie you have to do depth recognition
of objects in the scene)

2 - the user's hand interacting with the artificial elements in the scene.
Some code had to recognize a hand and figure out which element it was
touching.

What strikes you as the hard parts of those videos besides the real-time
requirement?

~~~
fchollet
These two things are non-trivial, but not particularly hard in themselves.
However, doing them at ultra-low latency becomes quite a challenge. Doing
_anything_ at ultra-low latency is already a challenge, but especially so when
what you're trying to do is running a deep neural net for entity recognition
or gesture recognition.

~~~
woodman
Training an ANN is computationally intensive, using a trained ANN is not. No
context switching for system calls, no memory management, just matrix math.

~~~
ansgri
well, first you need to know what image regions feed to ANN, and that can
involve some segmentation and pre-recognition, otherwise you're going to
evaluate the net at all feasible subwindows — and that's a LOT of matrix math
for you. Very big GPU can help, but they have latency in themselves, and FPGA
at such performance levels are inordinately expensive. Done at scale though
ASICs seem to be the sure-to-work way.

~~~
woodman
I'd be very surprised if a modern cpu couldn't handle the task, especially if
you were clever about detecting regions of interest, predicting head movement
and cache maintenance. But I'd also be surprised if they go to market with an
x86 under the hood.

I remember reading a while ago about how smart tvs were using ANNs for
upscaling, so it has been done at scale. _rimshot_

~~~
ansgri
(1) TVs don't have strict latency requirement. I've hard latencies of 100 ms
are common.

(2) Upscaling ANNs process rather small image neighborhood radius, and
required processing power is on the order of O(r² * log r), and if a minimally
recognizable cat is 50x50 px and for upscale you use a very large window of
16x16, that's 14 times already.

~~~
woodman
Latencies of 100 ms may be common because TVs don't have strict latency
requirements.

16x16 is a very small window, I have no idea what they're using for TVs, but
128 isn't uncommon in post production ANN upscaling. Also consider the fact
that ANNs have not received anywhere close to the level of attention in
optimization that compilers have, so there is also a lot of potential slack to
be taken up if real time processing demands it.

------
emcq
It's easy to think of reasons why this isn't a sound investment. However, here
are some thoughts why this may be sensible:

* This is largely Google's investment to cover possible future success of Facebook's Occulus or Microsoft's Hololens.

* They could have valuable non-tangible patents or employees. This is way past the "acquihire" funding levels, but perhaps the technology itself is valuable. Perhaps they get around that valuation with 100M/year in patent licensing. For perspective, IBM Research provides ~O(1B)/year in revenue from licensing patents.

* Magic leap has a technology that is going to revolutionize entertainment consumption. It could simply be good execution of augmented reality, but I don't think this is sufficient to get the market excited and stop using their mobile devices or TVs to consume a lot of entertainment. It seems like at best here it is a "better mousetrap" than Occulus or Hololens.

I'd love to hear other thoughts why this could be a useful investment.

~~~
josephpmay
As I compete with Magic Leap, I'm probably in a pretty good position to answer
this question.

The main reason why ML is able to attract this level of investment is that
their technology is literally decades ahead of what anybody else has. I
haven't had the opportunity to try their headset out, but I know some people
who have, and I haven't heard a single bad thing about it. The closest
metaphor I can think of is seeing a GUI for the first time or seeing a TV set
for the first time. I've used almost all of the other technology on the market
or in development, and nothing comes anywhere close to what Magic Leap has.

Not many people realize this, but Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, and
everyone else is pouring millions into AR/MR technology. You only hear about
Google and Magic Leap because internal R&D budgets aren't public, but this is
a huge area of research for everybody. A number of the largest tech companies
have recently opened up small research shops in Seattle, Israel, and
Cambridge, where AR/MR researchers have traditionally been based.

Proper AR/MR won't revolutionize entertainment consumption. It will
revolutionize all of computing, especially productivity. That's one of the
reasons why I love AR/MR so much more than VR, even though I've never
experienced AR/MR that's anywhere near the quality of good VR. Good AR/MR is a
significantly bigger leap for computing than iOS and Android were over
Blackberry, Palm, and Windows Mobile. Again, the best metaphor I can think of
is the GUI vs. text-based computing.

Lastly, ML does have an amazing patent portfolio and a world-class workforce
that would be a dream acqu-hire for any large tech company, but top-notch VC's
don't invest in startups for their patent portfolios.

~~~
jbhatab
What do you mean by revolutionizing computing? I assume you mean the way we
interact with computers, not something like computer processing speed.

I definitely agree that AR has huge potential in changing how we interact with
the world. Although I'm much more interested in technology that leverages
things like projects to augment my reality without having to wear a headset.
Very related things though.

How do you feel about headset vs no headset AR?

~~~
josephpmay
I personally think headset-less AR is a pipe dream. You're either using
projection mapping without any real sense of object/depth or you need real
motion holography which doesn't even exist in research labs. I've tried CastAR
and it's a huge disappointment.

------
pqdbr
Magic Leap has a patent application for "contact lenses" technology [1]

Imagine if instead of having to put somewhat ridiculous and obtrusive glasses
in front of your face, you could just use contact lenses that had this
augmented reality capability.

It would be ... life changing.

[1] [http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=2&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-
bool.html&r=94&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=%22magic+leap%22.AANM.&OS=AANM/%22magic+leap%22&RS=AANM/%22magic+leap%22)

~~~
untog
Do you need to demonstrate any kind of working model in order to patent
something? As far as I'm aware, you don't. I look at this as an aspirational
patent - frankly, exactly the kind of thing you'd see from a company with so
much money they can spend all day dreaming.

~~~
angersock
It's worse than that...these folks (or whoever inherits the patent) can now
sue anybody that actually _can_ get it working.

This is a great example of patents being bullshit.

~~~
ant6n
Or by the time this actually is possible, the patents will have expired.

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mosquito242
I don't know where I stand on this. To be raising such ridiculous amounts,
they must have some incredible technology to demo.

If they're anything close to what the second demo video shows, then they're
basically building Tony Stark's home computer interface in Iron Man.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Let's hope so. We see a lot of promises with this and HoloLens, but somehow
production versions are still not here. I'm still not really sure if the
latter isn't just a prank, or at least mostly post-recording CG.

> _they 're basically building Tony Stark's home computer interface in Iron
> Man._

Since you're bringing up Marvel - I fear the reality, at least with first
released products, will turn out somewhat like this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeiJ2jHyy7U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeiJ2jHyy7U)

~~~
eric_h
> I'm still not really sure if the latter isn't just a prank, or at least
> mostly post-recording CG.

The first video had a text disclaimer at the bottom of the entire video
insisting that there was no post processing or CGI.

The second video did not.

I rest my case ;)

~~~
codeisawesome
I... totally fell for that. Thanks for making me realise.

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sterl
Kinda amazing how these guys are past Series C now and still haven't released
a product.

~~~
teej
Along these lines - is there an example of a technology company that succeeded
after raising so much money without proving their product in the market?

~~~
tlrobinson
When your product has been featured in nearly every science fiction movie of
the last few decades does "the market" really need to be proven?

~~~
chao-
Given the former omnipresence of flying cars in science fiction movies, I
would say yes.

~~~
tlrobinson
Flying cars don't exist. That's a technology problem, not a market problem.

~~~
slavik81
There have been a number of flying cars over the years, such as the Model 59H
AirGeep II. They're just expensive and impractical, so nobody ever builds more
than a handful of them.

~~~
Nagyman
I never thought the "flying" part was the core technology... it seemed to be
the invention some non-traditional, low-noise, propulsion & power source that
could levitate heavy objects. I don't think we have that ... if we did, the
expensive and practical part might be solved and we'd have them everywhere :)

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kafkaesq
Glaciers are melting; forests are burning; coral reefs are blanching; ocean
levels are rising, water tables are dropping. The ecosystems that sustain our
food supply chains are collapsing; those that aren't collapsing, are being
poisoned; and the tiny niches relatively immune from these threats are being
bought by hedge funds and private equity firms. Our education system is being
gutted; so are our retirement plans. Our healthcare system seems to
resiliently resist nearly all efforts at meaningful reform. Every movement we
make, physical or virtual, is being relentlessly tracked, recorded, indexed
and archived by an exponentially growing number of surveillance systems,
private and governmental, for perpetuity.

And these guys are getting $1.4b so we can... shoot imaginary robots at the
office?

~~~
deftnerd
Don't underestimate the positive environmental impact that replacing monitors
and mobile phone screens might have. If this is successful and high-quality
enough, we there would be less stuff manufactured that requires nasty
chemicals, less to recycle, and less energy consumption.

~~~
kafkaesq
Compared to... headsets?

Not sure there's a positive tradeoff in terms of resources. And in terms of
chronic physical strain (vision, neck muscles) there may be a negative
tradeoff.

~~~
fricken4
If we all lived in huts, subsisted on rice and beans, and travelled by
bicycle, humanity wouldn't be threatening the stability of the biosphere; but
of course, we're wired to crave richer experiences, we hoard, and we seek to
acquire status which is demonstrated by how much excess cargo we have to
waste.

The more aspects of the human experience we can ephemeralize, the less we need
to go out and muck up the physical world to get what we want.

A just released Pew research study has shown that 1 in 5 are online almost
constantly. Which is to say, their experience of the world is already largely
virtual, and the role that their physical presence plays is, by extension,
diminished.

------
untog
Augmented reality has been the sci-fi dream forever, but I'm really, really
skeptical about its applications in real life. Not that they don't exist - the
shoot-em-up game demoed in that video looks fantastic. The Gmail app looks
horrendous. Worth billions? Depends on the implementation, and a demo video is
very far from the real thing. I wouldn't be investing.

~~~
hmate9
It's applications are virtually limitless. Everything from manufactoring to
gaming to content consumption can change with a good augmented reality device.

~~~
untog
Didn't people say the same about Google Glass before it came out? I know, I
know - this is very far from Google Glass. But all we have is a really broad
concept and some flashy demo videos.

"It's going to change content consumption in a limitless way" doesn't really
_mean_ anything. Based on past predictions, the way we consume content is
supposed to have been revolutionized about 100 times by now.

~~~
tlrobinson
Google Glass was a shitty augmented reality device. Magic Leap looks like it
could be the real deal, if they can make the hardware unobtrusive enough.

 _> the way we consume content is supposed to have been revolutionized about
100 times by now._

It has been at least once a decade for at least my lifetime (personal
computers, internet, mobile)

I predict in 10 years VR/AR will be as boring as smartphones are now.

~~~
OmarIsmail
VR in 10 years, and AR 10 years after that.

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oskarth
How can a private investor feasibly do a fixed down-side, small-stakes
shorting of Magic Leap? Hypothetically speaking.

~~~
sseveran
You might be able to find someone to create a derivative on it. You would
probably need a non-trivial amount of money to make it happen.

~~~
oskarth
That's what I figured. I wish there was some SaaS-ish fund/Kickstarter where
multiple small investors could go together for this kind of thing for a
nominal fee.

~~~
toby
That would probably get shut down pretty quickly, as it would be essentially
allowing a group of small-time players to make non-sports-related proposition
bets.

~~~
oskarth
What would be wrong with that? People do it informally all the time.

~~~
eric_h
Nothing, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately the regulatory landscape
disagrees.

How betting on the performance of a company is any different from betting on
the performance of an athlete or a horse just boggles my mind. Sure, in the
short term the variance is lower, but it's still a fucking gamble. It's also
the only legal way to gamble in all 50 states.

------
michaelbuckbee
The money flowing into Augmented Reality in general isn't so much about
'augmented reality' as a thing today so much as it's a big audacious bet on it
being the next wave of technology that replaces mobile phones.

~~~
sixQuarks
I believe smartphones will be looked back from the future and seen as what
they really are: a clunky way to interact with information.

AR is definitely the future of all interfaces, not an audacious bet at all,
pragmatic in fact.

~~~
RightWingRabble
Meh, I'm not so convinced. AR is certainly a great way to interact with real
time information, but there's a time and a place for that. I don't want to be
out at dinner and be interrupted with notifications while I'm having a
conversation. Laptops and Mobile phones have one huge advantage that AR and
even desktops don't have: they're easy to put away. Close the laptop, put the
phone in your pocket or in a drawer and it's gone. I suppose you could do the
same with glasses, but they're still more intrusive.

~~~
sixQuarks
No offense, but you're going to be one of the "old" people by then. AR will be
embraced fully by newer generations.

~~~
RightWingRabble
All evidence points to the contrary. There's been a pendulum swing in the
younger generations away from omnipresent technology such as mobile phones and
facebook. It's a mistake to think all subsequent generations will march toward
your definition of progress. For all we know, those generations' definition of
progress will be a focus on the physical world over the digital one.

~~~
sixQuarks
are you joking? In which world does the younger generation swing away from
technology such as mobile phones? Facebook is simply replaced by Snapchat and
other social apps among the youth.

------
kazinator
"Is this a dagger which I see before me?"

"No, dude, someone is feeding shit into your AR headset! Told you not to open
that suspicous 'Thane of Cawdor' e-mail!"

------
geori
If this turns out to be the successor to smartphones, then these comments will
look like people laughing at the Instagram acquisition.

~~~
shostack
Funny you mention that. Was just thinking about the book "Rainbow's End." In
the near future, it had most people interacting with tactile "muscle-movement"
based input, and contact lens displays.

Wearables/wetwear are almost certainly going to be the future at some point.
Our grandchildren will laugh when we tell them about having to hold a device
in your hand with a tiny screen where you hunt and peck at an even tinier
keyboard with your thumb.

Of course we also won't be used to being bombarded with the inevitable
massive, vision-filling AR ads that will come.

~~~
shpx
I might sound like I'm joking, but as soon as I get an AR headset I'm building
a computer vision system to detect billboards and overlaying a black rectangle
over top. It's already possible to fill in items of a given class in images
with deep learning, and it'll only get better.

~~~
shostack
Agreed. I personally can't wait for the inevitable ad blocking war that
ensues.

Unfortunately, if I had to posit a guess, it would be that the main
"application space" for AR won't be the free and open web. It will be the
walled garden appstore(s). You'll have your staple apps, but they will all be
self-contained, and the owners of the hardware/OS will have strict controls
around the ability to do things like, block ads from their ad network (which
might be the only one allowed on the device).

Big tech companies don't like the users being able to control what they see
through a browser that can install whatever plugins the user wants. Make no
mistake, they want full control over the experience, and have no qualms about
doing whatever it takes to own that experience. To not do so enables their
competitors to claim a foothold in their territory.

------
srameshc
It certainly is a morbid round of funding. But seems like they have a lot of
current and future value. Reminds me of the time when DST invested in Facebook
and I thought these guys are out of their mind. But if I look back, they are
of course much smarter bunch who knows how much they will get back. Similarly
many are in it for its potential technology and many are in it for the returns
and they all know what they will get.

------
angersock
Seems a bit much, doesn't it?

This might be the pets.com of the twenty-teens.

~~~
zardo
They need to fabricate their light field emitter photonic IC. I imagine that's
pretty expensive.

------
ljw1001
An $800,000,000 investment in an unknown company called Magic Leap shows that
some people have no sense of irony

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gavanwoolery
I have reliable sources who have tried the tech. It is real, but many years
out from mainstream (5-10 seems like a probable range). However, their first
teaser video* is almost definitely fake (if I were to place a bet). It looks
like a prerendered video, not an interactive application, or even a static
lightfield video.

*source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPMHcanq0xM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPMHcanq0xM)

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karcass
I didn't see in the article -- what was the post-money val?

~~~
tristanj
Post-money valuation of $3.7 billion. It's from the forbes article, not sure
why TC didn't include it.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2015/12/09/secretiv...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2015/12/09/secretive-
augmented-reality-startup-magic-leap-raising-827-million/)

Another source shows they were seeking to raise $1b at around a $4.5 billion
valuation. This one is dated two months ago though.
[http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/blog/morning-
edition...](http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/blog/morning-
edition/2015/10/exclusive-magic-leap-close-to-receiving-a-1.html?ana=twt)

------
Keyframe
Those video look pre-made as fuck. I don't care if it says it's not. If it's
not it has some magic tracking going on as well. Would love to hear about
that.

------
colinshark
I can't get past the fact that the software, in order to interact with the 3D
world, will be expensive and cumbersome to make. Also, people (your income)
born before AR tech generally don't want hardware on their face.

This, and Hololens, and similar, will fail for a while, and I'm thinking it
will be decades. I'm placing my bet now.

~~~
prawn
If they see it through, the software will eventually be used by almost
everyone. And the thing about software is that it's essentially free to
duplicate, meaning that it need not be expensive and cumbersome at scale.

If they get it working well with glasses or contact lenses, it will win
through. The ability to spin up displays as needed (massive TV in your living
room, a screen in the kitchen, shower, ceiling of the bedroom, outside, etc)
will mean that fewer and fewer rely on physical displays.

Not to mention the availability of more contextual information (tourism,
sports, researching, gardening, socialising, etc).

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Dwolb
Can anyone explain what force is recoiling the shooter's hand in the second
video? Or is that gun computer-generated?

~~~
scott_karana
Even if the graphics are real (and that's a big if), the video is certainly a
staged "proof of concept", and the apps are not real.

Thus, the shooter is recoiling the gun himself, to fit the narrative.

~~~
JeffreyKaine
The game could pick up on a recoiled hand to trigger the virtual gun.

Try it really quickly. Hold your hand in front of you like you are holding a
gun. recoil your hand. feels pretty cool, right?

Now, just imagine that the software is tracking your hand and the gun shoots
whenever you intentionally recoil.

~~~
scott_karana
Yes, it's true that the app could hand-track "recoil", just like it's
seemingly tracking his gestures in the 3D GMail.

I still think it's staged. The motions look way too "casual" and not
deliberate enough to be interpreted easily in software without some
revolutionary tech, _in addition_ to the unrelated revolutionary tech needed
to do the AR "live".

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amima
Now it would not surprise me much even if they go public (IPO), before
releasing the actual product to the market. That would be a nice precedent for
the tech startup industry.

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sidthekid
Would this be usable by those who normally wear contact lenses?

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ljk
stupid question: isn't this bad if your eyes are constantly focusing on
something so close to you?

~~~
josephpmay
With ML's technology, you're not focusing on something close to you. That's a
big part of what makes them worth so much money. They're able to project light
at real focal planes.

------
zardo
The rumor back in October was that Alibaba was leading a $1B funding round.

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dharma1
last I read was they were getting into silicon photonics manufacturing. Sounds
expensive, and very patentable.

Would be great if someone with better knowledge would expand on the
engineering challenges they face.

------
gtpasqual
If this doesn't raise any flags, I don't know what else will.

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free2rhyme214
Does anyone think Google will buy Magic Leap?

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juskrey
The bubble is going to blow hard. Period.

