Magic Leap planned lighter headset, new AR glasses before layoffs - Business Insider

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Before layoffs, Magic Leap was working on a smaller, lighter headset that improves on the original's biggest downside — with a more radical design to follow

, the once-hot AR startup Magic Leap is now shifting gears and turning entirely to business customers to try to guarantee a future, with two products in the pipeline.

It will also be lighter than the Magic Leap One, according to the sources who described it as a headset that, while being svelter, maintains a similar shape to the current headset and will still rely on the Lightpack that attaches to the glasses by a wire and sits in the wearer's pocket. One of the company's Florida labs had been working to miniaturize some of the technology for ML3 in order to attain the smaller profile, but sources say this work was transitioned to the company's Seattle offices before the restructuring.

One person involved with the planning of ML2 said some people inside the company thought that the summer 2021 target was already too ambitious, despite leadership insisting it could be done, and that they believed an end-2021 release target was more realistic. The rivalry perhaps hit its peak when Magic Leap and Microsoft competed for a military contract to supply the US Army with AR headsets – a deal Microsoft ultimately secured.

At the 11 am meeting on April 22 when CEO Rony Abovitz announced the layoffs over a video call, employees were told they would soon receive an email telling them if they were being laid off, retained, or put into transition. These emails were sent to employees' personal email addresses as company emails for laid off employees were deactivated within an hour of the announcement.

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