agic Leap said Tuesday that it raised $794 million in new funding in a round led by Alibaba Group, confirming earlier speculation that the secretive augmented-reality company was raising a large new round of funding. Together with a previous round of $542 million led by Google, this brings Magic Leap’s total raised since late 2014 to about $1.34 billion.
So what’s Magic Leap doing with all that money? A lot of things. The Florida-based company has spent several years now working on hardware to build its so-called “cinematic reality” technology into a head-worn device that makes it possible to see all kinds of digital images—monsters, robots, and more—as though they’re actually in front of you.
Though it hasn’t yet publicly shown off such a thing, a demo using a hulking, stationary prototype that I saw in late 2014 did make it look like monsters and other characters were in the room with me. I also got a look at a non-working engineering prototype that looks more like a bulky pair of sports sunglasses with a battery pack attached.
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