Why Has Magic Leap - A Company With No Track Record With Consumers - Attracted Investment of Over US $1 Billion - Including Hundreds of Millions From China's Alibaba?

What is a Mixed Reality Lightfield?

Take a look at this demo:



This little snippet of online video, apparently demonstrating a new proprietary augmented reality ("AR") technology developed by Magic Leap, is all the public has had a chance to look at. And it's available for free on YouTube.

But apparently certain well-heeled investors have seen enough from Magic Leap to convince them that there is a product (or products) being developed in that Florida startup's facility to perhaps create a viable new experience with a market that some day might just rival the money being made by traditional theatrical motion pictures.

How else to explain China's Alibaba's role as a major investor (aka "strategic partner") pouring hundreds of millions into a company that hasn't brought a single product to market?

As reported in a February 2nd, 2016 post to Mashable, Magic Leap "has added a whopping $793.5 million in new funding, despite the fact that the public hasn’t even seen its product yet. Significantly, the new round of funding is led by Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant founded by Jack Ma." 

This may be (as filmmakers Werner Herzog and Mike Monello and others have predicted) a technology that will fail to click - because the human behavior of putting on a headset and interacting with things that aren't really there is just too fundamentally weird.

But....

If Jack Ma of Alibaba - who has created a New World business that has thoroughly disrupted retail commerce and banking in the world's biggest country - believes that Magic Leap is developing a 21st century product - a type of experience that will appeal to the over 400 million customers already on Alibaba's platforms as well as hundreds of millions of other potential customers around world - who am I to question that bet?

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