Magic Leap shakes up leadership with new CEO

Magic Leap, maker of one of the best AR headsets on the market, is making a major change in leadership with a new CEO who will face the challenge of carving out territory for its transparent augmented reality technology in the face of a growing wave of pass-through AR headsets.

After a meteoric rise and then a near-catastrophic fall under its original founder, Ronnie Abovitz, Magic Leap brought in Peggy Johnson to stabilize the company, manage its turn into an enterprise, and launch Magic Leap 2. Three years later, Johnson was released as a new product CEO.

Magic Leap has announced that Ross Rosenberg, an experienced CTO who has worked in senior roles at a number of large-scale enterprise technology companies, will take on the role.

Given the announcement and its description of the Rosenbergs’ previous work, it appears that Magic Leap is hoping the new CEO can steer it toward increased (or perhaps, primary) profits.

But Rosenberg’s tenure will inevitably be about more than streamlining operations and finding product-market fit. Hell also needs to grow and defend the company’s turf, as newer headsets focus on pass-through AR capabilities like the Quest 3 and Vision Pro.

While neither headset directly competes with Magic Leaps’ transparently focused augmented reality headset, Rosenberg will certainly be looking for the next few years at which point AR headsets can reach the true-to-life size and visual quality that Magic Leaps currently has. get close Advantage – benefit – benefit – benefit.

The company has yet to mention a Magic Leap 3 headset, though given that the current Magic Leap 2 has only been out for a little over a year now, it could still be in the works.

From the outside, at least, the company appears to have had an amicable parting with former CEO Peggy Johnson, though it’s unclear which side forced the change.

“Having accomplished much of what I set out to do at Magic Leap, I felt it was time to transition leadership to a new CEO who can lead the company through its next period of growth,” Johnson said in the announcement. I am very proud of the leadership team we have built at Magic Leap and want to sincerely thank all employees for their work in helping to successfully navigate the company into the enterprise market.