It’s been around a year now since Magic Leap debuted their Creator Edition AR (augmented reality) headsets and so far, it’s been anything but a success. In fact, as of December (the last time confirmed sales figures were revealed) they had only managed to sell around 6,000 units.
Despite huge levels of investment in the company, however, there was some concerning news when the Magic Leap announced that there would be significant lay-offs as well as some big restructuring. Largely taking the form of scrapping many side projects in favor of their main headset development. Put simply, these are usually warning signs that the money is beginning to run out!
Well, it seems that if Magic Leap was in financial difficulty, they may have gotten a stay of execution as in a report via GamesIndustry, the AR firm has just managed to raise an additional $350m of external investment.
Despite the loss of some staff members, Magic Leap has confirmed that the fresh investment means that no further planned lay-offs will be necessary and, as such, they can proceed with development of their ‘Magic Leap Two’ AR headset.
The bottom is an internal e-mail that was (presumably) sent to staff members on the potential chopping block.
“Today, as we have secured financing, we are also formally withdrawing the conditional WARN notice that was sent to you on April 22, 2020, otherwise there are no changes to the terms of employment and we look forward to continuing normal operations.”
I must admit that ‘financial difficulty’ was merely speculation on my part. It is, however, hard to ignore that the Magic Leap One has sold spectacularly poorly and, as such, something needed to happen while the development of the Magic Leap Two continued.
Will this be enough to save the company though? Well, the short version is that they need to get a success on their hands pretty quickly as a company can’t survive forever on impressive tech demos and ‘too expensive to buy’ products. All going well though, this will at least keep the metaphorical wolf away from their door!
Let’s just hope that their next headset won’t cost anything close to the originals $2,500 price tag!
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
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