Saudi Arabia Gains Majority Stake in Magic Leap in $450M Deal - Road to VR

Saudi Arabia has taken bulk stock of the US-based augmented world institution Magic Leap, The Telegraph reports, widening the stake via its state-owned sovereign wealthiness money with a woody amounting to $450 million.

Citing delayed accounts obtained from its European division, the institution is said to person raised $150 cardinal successful preferred convertible banal and $300 cardinal successful indebtedness from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) implicit the people of 2022. The concern puts the country’s ownership of Magic Leap implicit 50 percent, giving it wide bulk control.

The Telegraph reports that, arsenic of November 2022, Saudi Arabia’s PIF is “entitled to name 4 of the 8 directors of the committee of directors of Magic Leap.”

The wealthiness fund, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, invests successful projects considered to beryllium strategically important to diversifying its nationalist economy.

Through PIF, Saudi Arabia owns number stakes in Uber, Capcom, Nexon, Live Nation, Boeing, Meta, Alphabet, Citigroup, Disney, and Bank of America to sanction a few. It besides owns Premier League shot squad Newcastle United and LIV Golf, a challenger to the PGA Tour.

Photo by Road to VR

Founded successful 2010 by Rony Abovitz, the Plantation, Florida-based institution kicked disconnected its user ambitions with a agelong and ambitious tease of its archetypal AR headset, Magic Leap 1 (previously styled ‘One’), starting its selling run arsenic it emerged from stealth successful 2014.

Released astir 4 years later, the developer-focused ‘Creator Edition’ headset was initially priced astatine an eye-watering $2,300, which not lone deflated immoderate of the potent hype down the unicorn startup, but besides cemented a agelong and bumpy roadworthy up if Magic Leap wanted to yet connection its tech astatine a user terms point.

Having awkwardly straddled the prosumer conception with constricted success, successful mid-2020 Abovitz announced helium would be stepping down arsenic CEO, signaling a pivot that would refocus the company’s efforts connected servicing endeavor alternatively of consumers. Shortly afterward, Microsoft’s Executive VP of Business Development Peggy Johnson took the reins arsenic CEO of Magic Leap.

The institution has since released its follow-up headset, Magic Leap 2, to endeavor partners and done third-party vendors, putting the instrumentality successful nonstop contention with Microsoft’s HoloLens 2.

To date, Magic Leap has raised $4 billion, with number investors including Google, Alibaba, Qualcomm, AT&T, and Axel Springer.