Around a month ago, the future of Magic Leap seemed more than a little uncertain as the company confirmed not only staff lay-offs but also a major restructuring process. While it wasn’t cited as a specific reason, it didn’t exactly take a business genius to figure out that this was almost certainly because the money was starting to run out!
Fortunately, a little over a week ago, Magic Leap confirmed that the company had been able to raise $350m in fresh investment and, as such, things were (kind of) back on an even keel. It seems, however, that this financial investment is not without a casualty. In a report via TechSpot, Magic Leap has confirmed that its current CEO Rony Abovitz will be stepping down and, put simply, they’re looking for a new boss!
With the new funding in place, it seems that (for the moment) Magic Leap may have found the means to keep the lights on for at least a couple more years. More importantly, to also stave off the need to ‘sell-up’ to one of the tech giants. Something that the company has always been against doing.
The announcement, however, only seems to confirm my initial beliefs that this investment was desperately needed and, let’s face it, CEO’s generally don’t tend to be removed (or step down) when companies are doing well! If anything, quite the contrary. They’re usually removed because a company is literally on the verge of collapse!
With a new CEO in place, Magic Leap can still be a success, but there’s a number of factors they need to sort out very quickly. Firstly, they need to release a product that doesn’t cost a fortune. As you may recall, their original ‘creators edition’ AR headsets (while featuring generally impressive technology) retailed for over $2,500 and, at the last reported figures, had only sold around 6,000 units!
One can, therefore, only hope that the Magic Leap 2 is going to represent a more cut-down and affordable option. If I was CEO, that’s exactly what I would be pumping all my efforts into!
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
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