A secretive company called Magic Leap is taking an exciting new angle on wearable tech. It’s so exciting that search giant Google, along with several other interests, just invested more than half a billion dollars in a mysterious venture called Magic Leap, a company that, based on various reports, is working on technology focused on the virtual reality and augmented reality space.
So far, the company has kept a tight lid on what exactly it has to offer in terms of technical specifics but, whatever it is, Google and several other major players believe it’s worth the $542 million in investment dollars announced on Tuesday.
Also included in the investment round are Silicon Valley heavyweight venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, private equity firm KKR, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, film studio Legendary Entertainment and telecom company Qualcomm.
The mega-investment round follows early buzz last week that Google was preparing to sink cash into the company, which calls what is does “cinematic reality,” a term the company has trademarked.
What that term means is still unclear, as the technology hasn’t been publicly demonstrated, but when Legendary Entertainment CEO Thomas Tull got a first-hand look at the technology, he reportedly said, “It’s one of the few things I’ve ever experienced in my life where I came out and said, ‘This changes everything. This is a marker of the future.'”
Earlier this year, the company came close to describing its project in a statement on its website, which claimed that it was working to “develop and commercialize what we believe will be the most natural and human-friendly wearable computing interface in the world.”
In the same statement, Richard Taylor, co-founder of the digital effects house Weta Workshop, best known for its works on the Lord of the Rings films, gushed about Magic Leap’s technology.
“Technology should serve us,” wrote Abovitz. “Computing should match human experience, it should respect human physiology. Computing can feel like everyday magic, and it can feel much more human, much more like our world. Our mission is to deliver on this dream…”