Live data from Hacker News

All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

kguttag.com

81–90 of 109 posts

Re: All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is magic leap burning through so much cash? It can't be all salaries and at the same time they don't seem to be selling a ton of devices at a loss. Are they building factories or something?

Nepotism. The people running the company hired all of their friends and family into kooshy do-nothing positions.

I've seen this ! My fav-no-useful positions I've seen filled was a "Business-Analysis" and "UX-Expert(basically a graphics artist)". The B.A spend his days drawing the most useless and not even pretty diagrams of how the "new business" which never arrived was going to work and integrate with our current systems(which he had no clue how they worked or what their limitations were). Lol those graphs and diagrams had more fantasy in them than all of the LOTR combined. Once we got to retrenchments he was the first to go and the loudest to protest of the unfairness !

Re: All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

#82
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They released their product months ago.

Did they? I googled "buy magic leap" and all I can find are dev units ("Creator Edition"). That's not a consumer product. That's a pre-requisite for a consumer product. Magic Leap have never released a product for general sale.

I agree with you ! I know the words for many years (Magic Leap) but I can never remember their product or promise they offer, I spent a fair amount of time on line and reading the news. I've also "missed" their product offering.

Re: All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

#83
Magic Leap is spending somewhere between $600M and $800M per year and that they have burned through all of their initial $2.4 Billion.

Doing what? They've sold a few thousand glasses, and have done a fair amount of R&D. But $2.4 billion? That's 12,000 engineer years.

Re: All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

#84
post #70

> Magic Leap is spending somewhere between $600M and $800M per year and that they have burned through all of their initial $2.4 Billion. Is it possible for ML to be viable at all? Assuming they manage to make $1000 profit eventually per device, they will need to sell at least half million devices each year. It seems militery usage probably won't be able to fund this alone as the size of US militery is just 1.5M. In U…

If they're selling it to the US military they're making at least mid-five-figures in unit profit.

Re: All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

#85

I’m really hoping magic leap makes it in the long run. They’re a huge tech employer in south Florida, and frankly we could use more tech companies. I’m always afraid a recession will wipe them out and flood the market with experienced engineers.

Sup Guys! Long time Miami native - there are dozens of tech cos: I'm always psyched to meet more people and tell them all about what's going on in miami, feel free to email me: ab@bitsorbricks.com or text me 954-247-1673!

Re: All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

#86
post #43
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn’t be $0, since they have likely sold a few tens of thousands of dev kits. Gross profit on those devices is likely zero or worse though.

> a few tens of thousands of dev kits I'd be willing to bet that it's more like a few thousand at most. Does anyone here know anyone with a Magic Leap One (maybe yes, since this is Hacker News, but still...)?

A developer friend of mine has a pair. They’re pretty underwhelming. It basically creates a small rectangular overlay in the centre of your vision. Far from the fully immersive experience I was expecting.

Re: All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

#87
So what is up with AR?

The way i naively imagine startups work is that they identify a market, develop a product for that market, then sell the product to the market.

So where have the AR startups gone wrong? Did they not actually identify a market? Does the market turn out not to exist? Have they not been able to develop a product that adequatly fits the market? Are they unable to sell a perfectly good product to the market for some reason?

Re: All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

#88
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using patents to secure loans is not new. Most Famously Tesla did it. What makes it "news" is that Magic Leap was able to raise $2.6 Billion without having to resort to using the I.P. as collateral. It usually does not make the previous investors happy and you usually resort to this when you can't raise money any other way. It is also a one-trick-pony in that you can't do it again and future potential investors know…

How is magic leap burning through so much cash? It can't be all salaries and at the same time they don't seem to be selling a ton of devices at a loss. Are they building factories or something?

"Magic Leap is estimated to have over 1,800 employees and 19 office sites."

Re: All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

#89
post #50
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a few tens of thousands of dev kits I'd be willing to bet that it's more like a few thousand at most. Does anyone here know anyone with a Magic Leap One (maybe yes, since this is Hacker News, but still...)?

Fair. Karl is probably close to the mark with his estimate of 5-8k. I would also guess that the vast majority of those are in the hands of other companies in the AR space rather than end-users of AR experiences.

^ this. I am unable to buy a pair (in London), but I have some loaned to me from ML so I can help someone deliver a product (for festivals, not the store/consumers)

Both these things continue to point toward the hype machine over mass market/sales/consumer consumption

Re: All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is magic leap burning through so much cash? It can't be all salaries and at the same time they don't seem to be selling a ton of devices at a loss. Are they building factories or something?

Nepotism. The people running the company hired all of their friends and family into kooshy do-nothing positions.

Sounds like WeWork...

1600 employees. Billions raised. Big hype, but what actually shipped is similar to a three-year-old Hololens.

Do you have any specifics? Who were the friends-and-family hires at Magic Leap?

Post reply on HN