Magic Leap Inc, a startup backed by technology powerhouses including Google and Alibaba Inc that has raised more than US$1.4 billion, has hired more than 600 employees and is close to starting production of its first “mixed reality” products.
Speaking at the Fortune magazine technology conference in Aspen, Colorado, Magic Leap chief executive Rony Abovitz said the company was debugging its production line in Florida and would launch the products soon.
He declined to give a date.
Magic Leap has developed a technology that allows computer generated images to be fully integrated into a real-world landscape. It is akin to how the Pokemon Go game combines computer images and reality, though Magic Leap promises fully realistic, 3D computer images.
“In Magic Leap, I would see Pokemon just like I see real people,” Abovitz said. “We love what they’re doing. It’s a gateway to a whole new future.”
The company is one of the most ambitious tech startups of recent years.
“We’re a full-stack tech company,” Abovitz said. “We do the hardware, the software, electronics, chip design and sensors. We want to deliver something that never existed before.”
The company is working with several outside developers and is to open a developer laboratory in the San Francisco Bay Area, Abovitz said.
Consumer applications will come first, he said, but the company is already working on business and medical uses for the product.
Magic Leap’s efforts come after privacy concerns forced Alphabet to stop producing Google Glass, which overlays computer images onto the field of vision. Microsoft Corp is focusing on business applications for its HoloLens smartglasses launched earlier this year.
Timothy Carone, a professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business in Indiana, said the success of Pokemon Go on smartphones could spur faster development from hardware makers — Microsoft with its HoloLens, the secretive startup Magic Leap, or Google, which could still revive its failed Glass headgear.
“The reaction [to Pokemon Go] is a quick of vote of: ‘Yeah, they got this right,’” Carone said. “My guess is that a lot of developers have gone back to figure out how to take this approach.”
Additional reporting by AP
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”