After struggling with consumers, Magic Leap has pinned its hopes on enterprise. • TechCrunch

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Something wasn’t working. In the year In late 2020, Magic Leap announced a major overhaul led by incoming CEO Peggy Johnson. “[W]”I just had to focus a little bit more,” she told reporters at the time.

From the outside, sure, it sounds like they’re talking about a typically low-level CEO. It doesn’t take a business genius to point out that things aren’t working. It certainly wasn’t a reflection of the technology. Those who were able to try Magic Leap’s mixed reality headsets were impressed. I spent time with the product at CES this week, and of course He hears. As in the future.

But the company ran into a problem that has plagued countless others in this category — the consumer audience simply wasn’t there for a $2,300 mixed reality headset. So he did what any extremely well-funded but struggling company would do. Magic Leap has moved on. He suddenly found himself in the business world, chasing the same enterprise audience that had lured him into Microsoft and Epson.

The pole was very visible on the show floor this week. The demos weren’t games, they were the result of developers looking deeper into serious use cases. In one, a 3D scan of the human brain emerges, showing how it could be used in medical settings. In another, a mountain appears. In front, wildfire moves. Small helicopters circle in the air above.

CTO Daniel Diez told TechCrunch that the shift in focus began in earnest at the tail end of 2019. The timing was certainly fortuitous, as the extended financial slowdown of the past three years has made $1,000 luxury technology more out of reach for the average consumer.

“We really saw that there was value coming out of the enterprise long before AR,” Diez explained. “That was the feedback we were getting from them. It also gave us insight into how the product needs to evolve to be built for real purpose for an enterprise, and that’s what you’ll see in Magic Leap 2.”

Others like Meta and HTC While they do their best to be for everyone with content, Magic Leap may not be in a particular rush to get their systems into the hands of more consumers — or at least to do so. The kind of hardware sacrifices needed to get there.

“We see an immediate opportunity in the enterprise,” said CTO Julie Larson-Green. I think on consumer, you have to have another consumer content business alongside that, of course. So we will not focus on that side now.

In recent weeks, the company has made more headlines for fundraising than any other specific content or hardware. At the end of the year, Saudi Arabia struck a controlling position through the Public Investment Company. The new cash flow joins the nearly $3.5 billion raised by the company, from GV, Alibaba and Qualcomm, among others. Magic Leap’s public struggles, coupled with its massive fundraising, have raised obvious questions about the company’s future.

When asked if the recent funding will have a direct impact on Magic Leap’s future roadmap, Diez said: “We’re very fortunate to have a very supportive investor base. They’re very aligned with our vision of really focusing on the enterprise and that their tools will enhance people’s ability to do really complex things. Our board and financial experts are all on the same page.

Read more about CES 2023 on TechCrunch

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