[devons]

Google (and others) gave them so much money because ML is aiming to build a platform that is not only the thing after smartphones, it's the thing after the Web: spatialized information seamlessly interleaved with reality, everywhere.

At that time (>2 years ago), Magic Leap seemed to have achieved the holy grail of Mixed Reality: optics that selectively block out light in real-time. Combined with demos, mockups, and sketches of real-world applications, this tech provided compelling evidence that ML was going to unlock true Mixed Reality real soon.

As erikpukinskis commented, even if Magic Leap fails to deliver, it will likely end up with an extremely valuable IP in an emerging space. Magic Leap did not invent Mixed Reality, but they filed patents on many first-order applications of the tech (there are countless others).

[cududa]

Just a quick note, not to debate the whole premise of this post or it's parent - but I don't believe Magic Leap (or anyone else) has developed the ability to selectively block out light.

The most I've seen done in this space is using very very bulky electrochromatic glass of which the 'pixels' are ~32x the size of actual pixels on the AR display, and have extremely "fuzzy" borders