Magic Leap demo.
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Magic Leap said to be ‘doing 1,000 things badly’ after raising $1.4 billion

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Magic Leap has raised an astounding $1.4 billion for its augmented reality smartglasses since 2014. But the company has run into considerable negative publicity lately, including a leaked photo that showed that the technology might be further behind than its CEO has claimed.

The negativity started in December when tech news site The Information said that Magic Leap executives overstated the quality and readiness of their AR device and that the prototype is inferior to those from rivals such as Microsoft and its HoloLens project. And on Friday, Business Insider published a leaked photo that showed the technology could be very bulky.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.