Last week it was announced that Magic Leap, a mysterious startup, had raised $542m in funding, a gargantuan figure even by the standards of Silicon Valley, valuing the company at around $2bn. The investors are also of an unusually high calibre, including Google and the semiconductor magnate, Qualcomm. More impressive still is that nobody has a clear idea about what exactly Magic Leap does.
In the funding announcement, CEO Rony Abovitz explained that the company was building a “hardware, software, firmware and development platform” that promises to be the next generation of interfaces. Getting rid of dependence on screens, in other words. He has not specified what exactly the format will be, but promised that it would not be a clunky headset.