It's easy to think of reasons why this isn't a sound investment. However, here are some thoughts why this may be sensible:
* This is largely Google's investment to cover possible future success of Facebook's Occulus or Microsoft's Hololens.
* They could have valuable non-tangible patents or employees. This is way past the "acquihire" funding levels, but perhaps the technology itself is valuable. Perhaps they get around that valuation with 100M/year in patent licensing. For perspective, IBM Research provides ~O(1B)/year in revenue from licensing patents.
* Magic leap has a technology that is going to revolutionize entertainment consumption. It could simply be good execution of augmented reality, but I don't think this is sufficient to get the market excited and stop using their mobile devices or TVs to consume a lot of entertainment. It seems like at best here it is a "better mousetrap" than Occulus or Hololens.
I'd love to hear other thoughts why this could be a useful investment.
I guess this makes me a pedant, but it bothers me to see big O notation used as a shortcut for "within an order of magnitude." It would probably be fine if everyone on HN had taken an algorithms class and knew the formal definition. In reality, a lot of people here are still learning what that capital O thing means, and if they see it used as "within an order of magnitude" we're doing them a disservice. (As someone who wormed their way into the field without a CS degree, I had to learn it on the job, so maybe it matters more to me than it should.)
The point you were making, however, is well taken. There's just no way for us to know what patent-related assets are involved in a deal like this.
Yeah, O(1) or O(1B) is the same. However, 1B is o(0.01 * (age of the company)), even though the sun will have exploded before a company who's revenue is 1 cents * its age reach 1B.
As I compete with Magic Leap, I'm probably in a pretty good position to answer this question.
The main reason why ML is able to attract this level of investment is that their technology is literally decades ahead of what anybody else has. I haven't had the opportunity to try their headset out, but I know some people who have, and I haven't heard a single bad thing about it. The closest metaphor I can think of is seeing a GUI for the first time or seeing a TV set for the first time. I've used almost all of the other technology on the market or in development, and nothing comes anywhere close to what Magic Leap has.
Not many people realize this, but Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, and everyone else is pouring millions into AR/MR technology. You only hear about Google and Magic Leap because internal R&D budgets aren't public, but this is a huge area of research for everybody. A number of the largest tech companies have recently opened up small research shops in Seattle, Israel, and Cambridge, where AR/MR researchers have traditionally been based.
Proper AR/MR won't revolutionize entertainment consumption. It will revolutionize all of computing, especially productivity. That's one of the reasons why I love AR/MR so much more than VR, even though I've never experienced AR/MR that's anywhere near the quality of good VR. Good AR/MR is a significantly bigger leap for computing than iOS and Android were over Blackberry, Palm, and Windows Mobile. Again, the best metaphor I can think of is the GUI vs. text-based computing.
Lastly, ML does have an amazing patent portfolio and a world-class workforce that would be a dream acqu-hire for any large tech company, but top-notch VC's don't invest in startups for their patent portfolios.
> haven't had the opportunity to try their headset out, but I know some people who have
It's easy to say technology is decades ahead when you haven't even tried it. Rumor/second-hand retellings can be very powerful. I'm really excited to see this tech, but I'm also really skeptical.
Definitely true (the Segway is a great example of this), but I've also talked to people who were involved in developing the technology academically and have studied their patents in-depth, and I'm pretty certain they're the real deal.
Recently on the voices of vr podcast, Dr. Thomas Furness mentioned that he also tried it, and it was based off his (Human Interface Technology Lab)'s virtual retinal display technology/patent. I'm guessing this is what you're referring to?
That must be intimidating to be going up against a company with that level of investment, hype and technology that you state as being "decades ahead of what anybody else has." Are you able to share what company you work for and how you are planning to compete?
Also, what would you consider the best consumer AR and VR experiences available on the market today, or expected to be on the market next year? Super interested in this space, but so far have only been able to demo the GearVR in a BestBuy and have an Unofficial Cardboard 2+ for my crappy Nexus 4 at home.
Can't currently share any details on who we are or what we're working on, but we have a technology that's almost as good from an experience perspective even though they're way ahead of us from a technical perspective. Laserdisk was way ahead of VHS and Betamax technologically, but VHS still won because it provided a better overall experience and was significantly cheaper.
The best consumer VR in my experience is the HTC Vive. I recommend you check it out if they take it on tour to where you live. I haven't tried the production version of Oculus, but I've heard excellent things with it, and I thought Crescent Bay was quite good. Playstation VR isn't as good in my opinion, but most people in the industry expect it be the most popular with consumers as it doesn't require a high-end gaming PC.
There isn't any good consumer-level AR experience that will be on the market in the next year.
Neal Stephenson is also paid by them. And he writes fiction. Thoughtful, interesting fiction. I remember when lots of credible people said that the Segway would change life, and whole cities would be built around it.
Great points. While it's market is limited, I think Skully [0] is an interesting case of where AR can be more than just an entertainment device, in fact becoming a much more valuable safety device.
I think this is really under rated. Imagine how many telephone engineers who look at one of those junction boxes and want to know which telephone wire is hooked up to Mr Jones house? Or a mechanic who wants to know what spanner to used on a bolt. Or a nurse who wants to know a sleeping patients bio rythms. Or emergency responders who want to glance at the disaster and see routes through it to victims.
What do you mean by revolutionizing computing? I assume you mean the way we interact with computers, not something like computer processing speed.
I definitely agree that AR has huge potential in changing how we interact with the world. Although I'm much more interested in technology that leverages things like projects to augment my reality without having to wear a headset. Very related things though.
I personally think headset-less AR is a pipe dream. You're either using projection mapping without any real sense of object/depth or you need real motion holography which doesn't even exist in research labs. I've tried CastAR and it's a huge disappointment.
In what specific ways is their technology better, from what you've heard? Hololens supposedly has a narrov FOV and you need a relatively dark room due to the additive display. Have they really solved these problems?
They're using laser-scanning rental projection, which could hypothetically produce objects indistinguishable from the real world. The biggest two benefits of this are real depth (you can focus on individual objects and it avoids the vergence accommodation conflict) and ultra-high resolution.
I have a source that's told me they've solved FOV, but I can't figure out how their technology could do that from a technical prospective. Hypothetically you don't need a dark room for ML's technology, but their demo video was darkened which makes me wonder if there is some limitation of this.
I haven't updated that website in almost three years, and most of the content on it is much older. I should probably take it off my HN profile. I'm currently a college student with a AR/MR startup
> Perhaps they get around that valuation with 100M/year in patent licensing.
Patents expire after 25 years, so at 100M p.a. deal for investors is spend 1B to get $2.5B back, two decades later. I'm not sure that even beats fixed interest.
Even with continuation it's still around 10% return.
And they start from time-of-approval (or filing?), not when you first put together a salable proof-of-concept, so for patents like which are not trivially possible to implement, you won't get all 20 years of it.
> For perspective, IBM Research provides ~O(1B)/year in revenue from licensing patents.
That is a (common) myth. If you parse IBM statements closely, they talk about that number for intellectual property licensing. I'm not aware that they have ever made a precise statement on patent revenue.
* This is largely Google's investment to cover possible future success of Facebook's Occulus or Microsoft's Hololens.
* They could have valuable non-tangible patents or employees. This is way past the "acquihire" funding levels, but perhaps the technology itself is valuable. Perhaps they get around that valuation with 100M/year in patent licensing. For perspective, IBM Research provides ~O(1B)/year in revenue from licensing patents.
* Magic leap has a technology that is going to revolutionize entertainment consumption. It could simply be good execution of augmented reality, but I don't think this is sufficient to get the market excited and stop using their mobile devices or TVs to consume a lot of entertainment. It seems like at best here it is a "better mousetrap" than Occulus or Hololens.
I'd love to hear other thoughts why this could be a useful investment.