The Worst Funding News In Tech, Leia’s New CEO, Cinematic AI

I always come back from CES exhausted, with a cold (thankfully, just a cold) and five stories to write. This year I got out three of them before CES news started to become irrelevant. Top XR at CES 2024, “AR Glasses Push Limits at CES 2024,” and “AR Helping Handicapped To See and Hear at CES 2024.”

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund pours another $590 M into Magic Leap. This is happening just as Apple prepares to go head-to-head with Magic Leap with the February 2 launch of the Apple Vision Pro. Exactly one year ago, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned sovereign wealth fund added $450 M to its previous investment, giving them a fifty percent stake and overall control. This investment was not about control, it was about staying alive. Having awkwardly straddled the prosumer segment with limited success, in mid-2020 founder and CEO Abovitz laid off half the company and fell on his sword (resigned). Microsoft’s Executive VP of Business Development, Peggy Johnson, took the reins as CEO soon thereafter, and $500 M of fresh funding flowed into the company. She supervised the launch of its critically acclaimed Magic Leap 2 and shifted the company’s focus to all business. The company is mainly focused on medical applications now, while seeking to expand in other verticals. Johnson resigned in mid-2023, saying she had accomplished her mission there.

In an interview with VentureBeat’s Dean Takahasi, new CEO Ross Rosenberg said “We’ve been thinking a lot about the third chapter in Magic Leap’s history. Chapter one was about invention and the breakthroughs that were created under Rony. Chapter two was about productizing those inventions. We now have Magic Leap Two. Chapter three is about commercial adoption of that technology, which goes to customer use cases.” Yikes. That’s putting lipstick on a pig if I’ve ever heard it. They’ve been trying to commercialize the new Magic Leap 2 headset for three years now. Johnson left because they’re not making enough money. Rosenberg’s no fool. He wouldn’t have taken that job without new funding. My read is that this is some of the worst funding news in tech. [Full disclosure, Abovitz is co-host of my “This Week in XR” podcast. He never breathes a word about Magic Leap. The topic is a third rail. He’s shared nothing, and I don’t ask. I’m just a guy who reads the news and has opinions all on my own.]

Leia Inc. Announces Fabio Esposito as Chief Executive Officer. Founder David Faatal will become CTO. The company showed off a bevy of 3D laptops at CES. No glasses required. Instead, this new breed of display uses eye tracking to create the effect and it is, well, effective. In early 2023 Leia acquired its biggest competitor, Dimenco, which was taking a similar approach to PCs as Leia was with laptops. Esposito joins the company as 3D without glasses becomes more of a thing, as this year’s CES certainly demonstrated. Leia must be in good shape, since they don’t appear to need a $500M investment to attract a new CEO.

LG confirms it’s releasing an XR headset. Virtually nothing is known about the device yet, given that the only official word so far is a quote from the LG CEO Cho Joo-wan to a South Korean media outlet saying the company will “launch an XR device as early as next year.” It was announced last year that Meta was teaming with the company to help design and build its newest headset, with the first product from this collaboration expected for 2025, so that may be, in the end, what we are talking about here.

Walkabout Mini Golf just dropped their 24th VR mini-golf course, based on Jules Verne’s “80 Days Around the World.” This course, like all the others, will have you playing mini-golf in imagination – and gravity – defying spaces. For this experience, you’re transported to a Gilded Age airport for lighter-than-air ships docked high above Paris as it hosts the 1889 World’s Fair.

The Singaporean artist who calls herself @niceaunties made this mind-blowing cinematic AI artwork. “Because I do not have film background I feel it is more like a collage of things I like, animated, and with music. I remember people being confused with my work, ‘is it a music video? Is it a film? Is it art?’ Someone called it ‘entertainment art’. I am thinking maybe ‘reenacted dreams’, what do you think?” @Niceaunties explained the evolution of her work in an email. “I started my IG [Instagram] in January 2023 with the idea of a club in a faraway universe where aunties meet to tell stories of their adventures in many parallel universes. That was the original structure to organize all the content in a way that allow me to explore all kinds of artistic directions within this format, without fear of inconsistency.” @Niceaunties’ other short AI experience, “How I Got Here” was a finalist in RunwayML’s recent GenAI film competition.

Eugene YK Chung, founder of Penrose Studios, made this AI Film for Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” 50th Anniversary animation competition. He’s the award-winning director of VR films “Allumette” and “Arden’s Wake”. Chung is also invited to give a talk on Cinematic AI at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which starts today. Using Runway ML and Midjourney, Chung said he made this film in a couple of hours after dinner. It’s hard to believe, until you consider he made this one-minute AI scene on a Park City ski lift in February 2023.

Dave Clark sent me the short AI film “Borrowing Time,” above. He says it’s his “most involved narrative short yet.” Clark is a professional film director who plys his trade in southern California and has spent the last year pushing the limits of the medium to tell relevant stories with minimal resources. “This is based on a true story from My Father’s life during the 1960s dealing with the hardships of being Black and in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

This Week in XR is also a podcast hosted by the author of this column, Ted Schilowitz, Futurist, Paramount Global, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is legendary tech and business advisor influencer, consultant, and adjunct, Shelly Palmer. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.

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