Is Magic Leap Lying About Its Acid Trip Technology? – Vanity Fair

Magic Leap C.E.O. Rony Abovitz.

By Brian Ach/Getty Images.

Despite raising more than $1 billion since its 2011 founding, augmented reality start-up Magic Leap still doesnt have much to show for itself. What the company promises, a concept called cinematic reality, described by C.E.O. Rony Abovitz as a combination of virtual reality and an acid trip, does sound magical. But unlike Microsofts virtual-reality headset, the Hololens, which is already available to developers for $3,000, Magic Leaps product is reportedly still years away from market. On Friday, Business Insider published a leaked photo of what appears to be a prototype of Magic Leaps technology, featuring a bulky backpack computer connected to a headset. The photo seemed to confirm an earlier report that Magic Leap is having a hard time shrinking down its technology to fit into a consumer-size device.

Magic Leap C.E.O. Rony Abovitz pushed back on the report over the weekend, explaining on his companys Web site that its technology is still in an early testing phase and promising fans that its eventual product will enable your digital and physical worlds to come together in a very personal, social, and magical way. The leaked photo, he claimed, did not show its prototype but rather a test rig used to collect spacial data for its machine learning.

Abovitzs explanation contradicts the report by Business Insider, whose source told the publication that the bulky, poorly constructed device shown in the leaked image was, in fact, the real wearable prototype, a more finished version of which would be shown to the Magic Leap board this week.

Magic Leap has long faced questions about its much-hyped technology and allegations that it has misled supporters and investors about its progress. Last year, former Magic Leap employees told The Information that Magic Leap had over-promised and would likely under-deliver. According to The Information, the technology behind Magic Leaps initial prototypenicknamed The Beast and described as a rectangular, shoulder-width box that people could look into and see computer-generated images projected over the real worldlikely wouldnt be used in whatever product the company releases commercially.

Not everyone is concerned that Magic Leap hasnt yet finalized its prototype, despite working on its device for about six years. Andreessen Horowitzs Benedict Evans, who says he has seen Magic Leaps technology, joined Abovitz on Twitter over the weekend to defend the start-up. There are a bunch of great people at great companies working on A.R., he tweeted. No one is shipping a final product yet. Evans, whose firm invested in Magic Leap during its Series B fund raise, also dismissed critics of Magic Leaps technology, and added that gloating about any negative news (real or fake) about a start-up is just as bad as uncritical praise. Maybe worse.

Andreessen Horowitz partner Kyle Russell also tweeted a picture of the iPhones prototype, to argue that even Apples flagship device appeared unsightly in the initial phases of its development process.

Unlike the iPhone, however, Magic Leap has been hyped for years by the tech press and by Magic Leaps own marketing team, without plans to launch any time soon. In 2015, the company published a marketing video on YouTube called Just Another Day in the Office, offering a mind-blowing, first-person demo to show off its tech. Magic Leap, which is valued at $4.5 billion, later conceded that its too-good-to-be-true video was just a collection of special effects, created by Weta Workshop, a team based in New Zealand. The video, former employees told The Information last year, was aspirational, and intended to mislead the public about the companys progress.

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Sundar Pichai, Googles C.E.O., was born in Chennai, India, immigrating to the U.S. to attend Stanford in 1993.

By Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Alphabet president and Google co-founder Sergey Brin was born in Moscow and lived in the Soviet Union until he was six, immigrating with his family to the United States in 1979.

By FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images.

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, was born and raised in South Africa. He obtained Canadian citizenship in 1989 and briefly attended college at Queen's University in Ontario. He transferred to University of Pennsylvania, in part because such a move would allow him to get an H-1B visa and stay in the U.S. after college.

By Justin Chin/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Safra Catz, who served as co-C.E.O. of Oracle, was born in Israel. She resigned from her executive role in December after joining Donald Trumps presidential transition team.

By David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

The founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, was born in France to Iranian parents. He immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s.

By Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang moved from Taiwan to San Jose, California, in 1978, at the age of 10.

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Adam Neumann, raised on an Israeli kibbutz, moved to the U.S. in 2001, after briefly serving in the Israeli army as a navy doctor. Now hes the chief executive of the $16.9 billion New York-based WeWork, which sublets space to individuals and companies.

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The co-founder and C.E.O. of health insurance start-up Oscar, Mario Schlosser, came to the United States from Germany as an international student, receiving his M.B.A. from Harvard.

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Trump supporter Peter Thiel, who has expressed support for the presidents executive action restricting immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries, is an immigrant himself. Before he co-founded PayPal and made one of the earliest large investments in Facebook, Thiel moved with his family from Germany, where he was born. In 2011, he also became a citizen of New Zealand, adding a third passport to his growing collection.

By Roger Askew/Rex/Shutterstock.

Born in Hyderabad, India, Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella came to the U.S. to study computer science, joining Microsoft in 1992.

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Garrett Camp helped co-found Uber. He was born in Alberta, Canada, and now resides in the Bay Area.

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Is Magic Leap Lying About Its Acid Trip Technology? - Vanity Fair