Magic Leap, the company that’s working on an “augmented reality” device that promises to blow your mind, has finished up a giant funding round.
The Florida-based company, which had previously raised more than $500 million from Google and other investors, has added on a new round of at least $827 million, though industry sources believe the number may be even higher than that.
The new money will give Magic Leap a value of at least $3.7 billion. As we reported last year, the round will include money from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which hadn’t backed the company before, but is now on the hunt for big investing opportunities.
Sources say Magic Leap intends to announce the new round in the next few days. The company declined to comment.
Magic Leap’s technology is supposed to end up in a headset that will beam computer-generated images into your eyes, so that you end up seeing the real world alongside a virtual one. CEO Rony Abovitz has described the effect as “part-Matrix, part-Harry Potter.” You can see a proof of concept video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw0-JRa9n94
Magic Leap has let a handful of non-employees try out the tech, and everyone who sees it uses superlatives to describe it. The open question is whether Abovitz and his employees can turn their technology into a consumer product, and whether they’ll be able to get there before deep-pocketed rivals with lots of experience making and selling consumer tech, who are also chasing after versions of virtual and augmented reality.
Facebook, for instance, is supposed to start shipping a $600 version of its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset next month, and Microsoft got a lot of attention when it demoed its HoloLens augmented reality gear last year. And now Apple looks ready to join the fray: Tim Cook says virtual reality is “really cool“, and has reportedly assigned a team to create his own devices.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
