Magically leaping from hype to reality

In 2011, a scant seven years ago, Florida-based Magic Leap wow’ed the world and investors with fake videos of its planned augmented reality (AR) headset. The videos were so good, investors fell over themselves trying to stuff money into Magic Leap’s bank account, and they succeeded to the tune of something north of $2.3 billion US-dollars—making it the richest startup in the history of startups. The company continued to produce fascinating, albeit fake, videos and spoke about a new optical fab to make the diffraction lenses it needed for its AR HMD. Well, all the skeptics, potential competitors, and non-believers