Magic Leap’s $3.5B enterprise AR pivot and spatial computing platform

The Enterprise Pivot

Magic Leap secured $350 million in venture capital from unidentified investors to advance its spatial computing technology. Founder Rony Abovitz directed this pivot toward the enterprise market to capture near-term revenue in healthcare, manufacturing, and defense. This shift follows the company’s earlier decision to move away from the consumer market after a decrease in capital availability. The company also withdrew its previous notice concerning the layoff of up to 1,000 employees. Ross Rosenberg has served as CEO since October 2023. The company previously raised $2.6 billion in funding from investors including Google, Alibaba, and AT&T.

Industrial Deployment and Manufacturing

Boeing standardizes its product development on Siemens Teamcenter software to manage data for tens of thousands of employees. This system functions as a master data warehouse running on an Oracle database to manage parts and materials for the two million components in each plane. While Boeing currently manages a backlog of 3,600 commercial orders valued at $271 billion, the company struggles to deliver aircraft while dealing with a 15-month delay on the Dreamliner 787 model. This software helps engineers maintain visibility into project-wide changes to part specifications. The Siemens migration replaces older, customized IT and manufacturing infrastructure that hinders global collaboration. About 30,000 Boeing employees already use Siemens PLM from their desktops to manage the workflow of the product development process. As these large-scale manufacturing operations adopt more connected platforms, companies like Magic Leap seek to provide the hardware necessary for such complex environments. The Magic Leap 1, which the company now calls the Magic Leap 1, struggled in industrial settings because the cable attached to both the headset and the computing unit and it prevented users from wearing the computing puck under their overalls. This cable limitation caused the headset to weigh 810 grams when including the puck. The controller for the older model also reacted poorly to nearby metallic objects or electromagnetic fields. Will the integration of spatial computing platforms into Boeing’s Siemens-led workflow resolve the long-standing delivery delays?

Hardware Capabilities and Comparison

The Magic Leap 2 provides 2,000 nits of brightness and a 70 degree diagonal field of view. It uses an LCoS optical engine to produce a resolution of 1440 x 1760 pixels per eye. The headset includes more than 18 cameras and sensors, such as 3D indirect time-of-flight depth sensing. The device operates with a 120 Hz refresh rate and utilizes eye-tracking technology to adjust brightness at the user’s gaze point through segmented dimming. The Magic Leap 2 runs on the Android Open Source Project. Users can choose from three distinct tiers: the Base edition at $3,299, the Developer Pro edition at $4,099, and the Enterprise edition at $4,999. The Enterprise edition permits use in commercial deployments and provides two years of access to enterprise features.

The Magic Leap 2 weighs 248 grams, which is much lower than the 566 gram HoloLens 2. The HoloLens 2 provides a resolution of 1440 x 936 per eye and a field of view of 43 degrees horizontal, 29 degrees vertical, and 52 degrees diagonal. The Magic Leap 2 provides a higher refresh rate of 120 Hz, whereas the HoloLens 2 operates at 60 Hz. The HoloLens 2 includes support for Microsoft platforms like Teams and Dynamics 365, which provides productivity for companies. You should evaluate your specific requirements for field of view and brightness before choosing between these or the Microsoft HoloLens 2. The Magic Leap 2 delivers a more immersive experience for specific enterprise tasks, though its reliance on a tethered computing unit remains a physical hurdle.