![magic focus inc magic focus inc](https://vinc.gumlet.io/gallery/photos/forced-focus-red-1.jpg)
An AT&T deal that would place Magic Leap demo units in AT&T stores and see headsets run on the carrier’s 5G network.While it could be secretive about the headset, it announced plenty of deals with telecoms, artists, musicians, app makers, and others, including: So the company’s vision became its most distinctive feature.
![magic focus inc magic focus inc](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WXw2_kqI3CM/maxresdefault.jpg)
According to a report from The Information, the company simply couldn’t translate all the unique optics that wowed early viewers - housed in a prototype nicknamed “The Beast” - into a wearable device. Magic Leap’s unique hardware was its original draw, but the Magic Leap One experience ended up feeling a lot like the HoloLens. That raises an uncomfortable question: with the starry-eyed vision stripped away, what does Magic Leap have left? Instead, the company is focused on products that can keep the company alive - business-focused applications built in the model of Microsoft’s HoloLens. As the company shifts into survival mode, the dream of a market-shifting creative platform (best represented by the Magic Leap One) seems to be dead - or, at the very least, indefinitely delayed. The following week, founder Rony Abovitz stepped down as CEO. On May 21st, the company laid off around 1,000 employees before getting a last-minute $350 million investment that many saw as a lifeline. Launched in 2018, the Magic Leap One headset should have been mixed reality’s moment to shine - but it couldn’t match the hype the company had created. Flush with hype, the company hired science fiction luminaries, designed a product from scratch, and beat Apple and Facebook to market. Wired tested the beta product in a closed demo and compared it to the Matrix or Snow Crash’s metaverse. The company had raised over $2 billion by promising incredible hardware that would open up a new artistic medium - the first plausible avatar for the long-held dream of mixed reality. In 2016, Magic Leap looked like it would change the world.