Magic Leap announces layoffs as company realigns focus on enterprise and hardware

Published

1 year ago

April 24, 2020

James is editor in chief of TechForge Media, with a passion for how technologies influence business and several Mobile World Congress events under his belt. James has interviewed a variety of leading figures in his career, from former Mafia boss Michael Franzese, to Steve Wozniak, and Jean Michel Jarre. James can be found tweeting at @James_T_Bourne.

Virtual and augmented reality (AR) may well signal the future of online collaboration with the ‘new normal’ promised by the Covid-19 pandemic – but it may have come a little too late for Magic Leap.

The AR hardware firm has announced major layoffs and a move towards the enterprise ahd hardware markets, with some reports suggesting that up to half of the company’s workforce is to go.

In a blog post, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz outlined the ‘painful process’ of restructuring, with layoffs expected across the business, from executive to factory floor level. “While our leadership team, board, and investors still believe in the long-term potential of our IP, the near-term revenue opportunities are currently concentrated on the enterprise side,” Abovitz wrote.

The company released its original Magic Leap One Creator Edition headset in August 2018, with many in the industry – including this publication – noting that, with $1.8 billion raised in funding by October the previous year, it wasn’t before time. At a starting price of $2,295 USD, its place at the higher end of the market was assured. Critical response was relatively positive, although according to The Information at the end of last year, sales did not follow in the same vein.

The next-generation Magic Leap 2, according to Abovitz in a Forbes interview around the same time, was slated for a 2021 release, with the enterprise and ‘early prosumer’ market firmly in its sights. Updates from the company, such as an extension of its partnership with industrial software provider PTC, signalled this change.

Abovitz added in the blog post that the changes were necessary to advance Magic Leap’s technology, as well as ensure delivery of Magic Leap 2. “We must decrease investments in areas where the market has been slower to develop, providing us with a longer runway while retaining the ability to explore and build on future use cases when the market signals readiness,” he added.

Plenty of innovation remains in augmented reality right now, with various initiatives looking to put a positive spin on the current crisis. PTC is using its augmented reality technology to help produce more ventilators in the UK, it was reported this week, while alternate realities are being advocated by industry figures as a way for people to explore ‘outside’ if they are stuck at home.

“The post-Covid economy will be one of resiliency and the ability for businesses to operate across vast distances and connect with their customers in ways that mimic physical interactions, but benefit from the speed and scale of high-speed networks, will be critical,” wrote Abovitz. “Spatial computing will very much be part of that coming economic change.”

Many former Magic Leap employees have taken to LinkedIn to note their change in circumstances, including chief content officer Rio Caraeff, who said he was ‘forever grateful for the amazing learning experience’, and senior director of Magicverse Chris Matthieu, who said he was ‘still a huge believer’ in AR, VR, spatial, and decentralised edge computing.

You can read the full blog post here.

Picture credit: Magic Leap

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their use-cases? Attend the co-located IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, AI & Big Data Expo and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam and explore the future of enterprise technology.

Source: https://virtualreality-news.net/news/2020/apr/24/magic-leap-announces-layoffs-as-company-realigns-focus-on-enterprise-and-hardware/

Related Topics:AR / VR Business COVID-19 innovation Investments investors Markets Security Tech Technology The Future US

Blockchain

BitcoinOrg Hacked: Giveaway Scam Promising Users to Double Their BTC

Published

49 mins ago

September 23, 2021

Republished by Plato

Fake cryptocurrency giveaway scams continue to pop up frequently, and the latest victim is the oldest bitcoin educational resource – BitcoinOrg. As of now, though, the website has been taken down, and the pseudonymous developer operating it has blamed it on Cloudflare.

Earlier on September 23rd, users on Twitter outlined that the BitcoinOrg website has an untypical and concerning message on its homepage. It urged visitors to send a certain amount of the primary cryptocurrency and to double their investment.
Needless to say, this was most surely another scam, which the community has already grown accustomed to. History shows countless such fraudulent activities that involved some of the most well-known names in and outside the space.
Perhaps the most blatant recent one was against Twitter, where the accounts of names like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, and more were hacked to promote similar scams that promised people to double their bitcoins.
Despite sounding too good to be true, such frauds still manage to dupe funds from victims, which makes them especially dangerous.
As of now, BitcoinOrg has been taken down as it shows a 404 Not Found error. The developer behind the website, going by the Twitter handle Cobra, hinted that this security issue might be an issue with the new website security company as BitcoinOrg “hasn’t been hacked, ever” before it moved to Cloudflare.

https://t.co/OsFgRFRRZb hasn’t been hacked, ever. And then we move to Cloudflare, and two months later we get hacked.

Can you explain where you were routing my traffic too? Because my actual server didn’t get any traffic during hack. @Cloudflare @eastdakota.

— Cøbra (@CobraBitcoin) September 23, 2021

Interestingly, the CEO of Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, told CNBC earlier this month that cryptocurrency-related websites have become a popular target for cybercriminals.

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Source: https://cryptopotato.com/bitcoinorg-hacked-giveaway-scam-promising-users-to-double-their-btc/

Blockchain

United States Infrastructure Bill Brings Cardano Billionaire to Washington

Published

2 hours ago

September 23, 2021

Republished by Plato

Cardano Founder, Charles Hoskinson to Speak at GBA Blockchain & Infrastructure.

Charles Hoskinson, Founder of Cardano and Co-Founder of Ethereum,

Educates Government Legislators, Regulators, & Administrators

The recent debate over the Infrastructure Bill has made two things clear:

The government will be regulating blockchain activities, but they don’t understand it well enough to do an effective job. For that reason, the Government Blockchain Association (GBA) and our partners are organizing Blockchain & Infrastructure, a two-day educational seminar for government leaders and their staff. The educational content will be delivered to public sector organizations exploring blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Mr. Charles Hoskinson of Cardano will be speaking live from Washington, DC, and will also be broadcast to virtual attendees in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. This 2-day hybrid experience will be a crash course in blockchain and cryptocurrency training, followed by an evening reception for networking and meeting the speakers, including Charles Hoskinson, Scott Stornetta, and other blockchain pioneers. Live and virtual attendees will also be able to engage with Mr. Hoskinson and other participants through a conference app provided by Qbix.

In 2013, Mr. Hoskinson was one of the original founders of Ethereum. A few years later, he spearheaded IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), whose key project is Cardano. Cardano’s market cap is currently over $69 Billion. IOHK sponsors blockchain technology research labs at the University of Edinburgh and the Tokyo Institute of Technology and is collaborating on a blockchain research project with the University of Wyoming. Mr. Hoskinson will be speaking at Blockchain & Infrastructure and will be networking with conference attendees during the evening reception on September 28 in Washington DC.

Source: PlatoData Intelligence

Blockchain

Bhutan joins hands with Ripple for CBDC pilot

Published

2 hours ago

September 23, 2021

Republished by Plato

Ripple is in the news today after it announced a partnership with Bhutan’s central bank – the Royal Monetary Authority (RMA) – for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot.

This development was welcomed by the likes of Yangchen Tshogyel, Deputy Governor of the RMA, who said,

“Our collaboration with Ripple is testament to the potential of CBDCs to provide an alternative and sustainable digital payment instrument in Bhutan.”

According to the San Francisco-based blockchain firm, this will be a natural fit for Bhutan to enhance cross-border digital payments and expand its financial inclusion efforts.

The trial is set to use Ripple’s CBDC Private Ledger. Ripple further explained,

“Ripple’s CBDC solution leverages a private version of the public, open-source XRP Ledger, ensuring greater control over issuance, management, privacy, and validation – more-so than a public blockchain.”

Currently, Bhutan is targeting a sustainable payment solution and is working towards becoming the only carbon-negative country in the world.

Ripple has often claimed that its CBDC solution is carbon-neutral and its consensus protocol is 120,000x more energy-efficient than proof-of-work blockchains. This might be what caught Bhutan’s eye.

The initiative is also part of the Himalayan nation’s goal to increase financial inclusion by 85% by 2023. In fact, data suggests that of the 5.15 lakh adult Bhutanese above the age of 18, around 67% own a bank account in a formal financial institution.

Hence, the collaboration is under the country’s larger initiative of Financial Inclusion National Action Plan (FINAP) 2019-2023

According to reports, the pilot will run under the tentative name of “Digital Nürburgring.” Additionally, the distributed ledger technology will be in addition to Bhutan’s existing payment infrastructure and will improve the country’s retail and cross-border wholesale remittances.

This will reportedly be in alignment with the government’s Electronic Public Expenditure Management System (e-PEMS) to regulate transactions between the government and banking systems. As an extension, the country is looking to harness advantages of tremendous speed, cost efficiency, and innovation in the CBDC pilot.

Ripple CBDC Private Ledger

The US-based company had announced a private XRP ledger as an improved version of its public blockchain in March this year. It claimed to have added interoperability to the existing payments framework in accordance with the Bank of International Settlement’s CBDC requirement.

The solution is expected to facilitate full settlement interoperability for the RMA while maintaining monetary and technological independence.