> Magic Leap has reportedly received a $350 million lifeline, a month after slashing 1,000 jobs and dropping its consumer business.
What the heck do a thousand people do at Magic Leap? That’s an insane headcount for a company without a sales or consumer support team. And that’s just the jobs they cut!
To be fair, none of these things are trivial:
- Creating an AR operating system
- Developing and manufacturing AR hardware
- Creating an SDK and a developer ecosystem for the hardware and software
- Creating a platform for selling AR apps, and selling B2B
- Doing R&D and filing patents for new AR tech
I don't think they are one of those companies where I wonder why they need people. They are doing something really hard. Maybe too hard.
I'd imagine it's some kind of RTOS to handle the time sensitive parts of the graphics / AR stuff. Probably not custom kernel but they'd have to develop a lot of stuff around it.
As for the sales platform, why wouldn't they develop it? To attract developers they need to make it easy for users to buy the products those developers would be create. It's not like the early 2000's where you could launch a console without an online store, it's pretty much mandatory these days because both developers/publishers and consumers expect it to be there.
They have sales and customer support. They also don't have a (sizable) network of 3rd party developers yet, and had a lot of staff internally working on content for the platform.
In addition to the fact they design their own hardware, they manufacture and test it themselves too so they have supply chain/logistics to worry about, QA and test development, factory workers/technicians, etc.
Of all the "how does X have so many people?!" ML makes the most sense. It's hardware, not easyware.
Only if the product begins to feel infeasible. But as computing hardware continues to shrink and ML improves their processes, I'm willing to bet a lot of investors see success as an eventuality.
Pretty much this. There's something else at play here given they haven't been left to crash and burn, and patents either resold or licensing deals inked. There's likely something actively being used or funded that can't be left to fall over as part of a wider scope of work or project. Given it's JPMC, only the board will "officially" be privy to it.
Nobody throws money into the fire unless they're trying to keep something warm.
Once that project ceases, those employees will be cut and the resulting tech or teams will be acqui-hired by an R&D arm or contractor who'll continue to pick at the bones of it.
JPMC is in the money business. Not tech. They're riding this beater until it finally conks out.
> Whatever the case, the company is withdrawing the WARN notice (a 60-day notification for large-scale layoffs) sent to staff in late April. The move represents an apparent reversal of the massive layoff round it previously announced.
What does that mean exactly? Were the people laid off given their jobs back? What does "withdrawing" a WARN notice even mean?
Is most cases, large companies need to give a 60 day notification if they plan a sizable layoff. So perhaps they were just given the notification but not laid off yet. But many employers will "pay in lieu of notice" and lay them off immediately with the 60 days of pay.
>“We are making very good progress in our healthcare, enterprise, and defense deals,” Abovitz writes. “As these deals close, we will be able to announce them.”
Wouldn't surprise me if they sold lemons at such absurd contract prices that it made their investors giggle.
Whatever $100K is to someone, I know that what I said about salary is true. I’ve worked for small VC back companies with less than $10 million in revenue. $100K wouldn’t have made a difference either way.
This might sound a bit cynical, but companies like Magic Leap (and WeWork, for that matter) is why I find myself so fatigued with my "startup dreams" -- it's clear that VCs are an echo chamber and that getting in those circles is much more important than ideas, execution, or even profitability. During my brief stint into hardware startups[1], I could barely find people to answer my emails.
Magic Leap is literally garbage (it's downright embarassing when compared to Oculus or HoloLens), and yet they just raised another $350M. It simply boggles the mind.
I like the idea of micro-saas's better than all these unicorns. I love stories from Indiehackers about companies making 5-20k/month w/ 1-2 devs and that's all they need. It pays the bills, gives some freedom to do what they want etc....
Opposed to these behemoth's who really only have a hope and a prayer that they're a bit enough disruption that they will pay off. Like Uber, Groupon, Living Social, WeWork, AirBNB, etc... I think they all could be more valuable had they operated more lean, w/ a solid strategy to monetize early and less focus on VC money and raising seed rounds.
TLDR; I like the little guy stories, and am also fatigued of the giant so-called unicorn stories.
Magic leap is AR which consumers and businesses definitely don't want.
VR has nothing to do with Magic Leap or even AR. VR probably has a consumer case (consuming media) but no real business use case until after the consumer case has been made.
I was of the same opinion until I tried the latest Vive headset. I'm ready for VR. GTA 6 with 360 treadmill, VR and Unreal Engine 5 level graphics will be the next level.
Did you actually play Alyx though? It’s amazing. I think VR will dominate both the consumer and commercial markets as it matures. It will be a defining technology of our lives.
No, but every comment I hear says exactly the same as yours - that it’s phenomenal.
It’s definitely the exception, though. Nothing else comes close, so I’m having difficulty justifying shelling out $1000 on something for a single game, no matter how exceptional.
I don’t know why you’re down voted — until we fully appreciate how the sense of smell triggers stronger memories than spatial representations of place, VR will continue it’s glorious march off the cliff.
Thanks for the data. I don’t doubt units will be sold - but when viewed as the search for the next personal computer, these embodiments fall woefully short.
There are very interesting use cases in ‘perspective collaboration’ - as in, ‘do you see what I see?’ Other stellar use cases are how you can prepare for new spaces and new environments. These use cases will sell many units (along with the de facto: gaming).
All this said, I feel the parent comment is correct. The way these companies are approaching the ‘why’ is very ‘it’s like you’re there’ ; ‘look at how connected you are’ ; and some variant.
All is not lost though. There are incredible changes in society if these embodiments (VR, AR, MR, XR) are seen as one of the many user interfaces for the next kind of personal computer. As in, if you change the basic command structure between user and computer - then the next generation PC can take shape.
[Edited: clarity and still terrible]
Honestly, Snap isn’t too far off, but the valley is uncanny.
the technology is really wonderful and given this current crisis, things which digitizes us becomes even more important. we should try and go for mind uploading soon.
What the heck do a thousand people do at Magic Leap? That’s an insane headcount for a company without a sales or consumer support team. And that’s just the jobs they cut!