PIF-backed U.S. tech firm planning innovation center with Saudi Aramco

PIF-backed U.S. tech firm planning innovation center with Saudi Aramco

CHICAGO: Magic Leap, a US augmented reality startup backed by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, is negotiating with oil giant Saudi Aramco to open a first-of-its-kind computing innovation center in the Kingdom, CEO Peggy Johnson has told Arab News.The Florida-based tech firm, which was supported with an injection of $400 million from the Public Investment Fund (PIF) in March 2018, announced at January's Future Investment Initiative forum in Riyadh a partnership with Aramco to expand uses of its virtual reality headset technology in the oil industry."So, it will allow us, together with Aramco and others in the Kingdom, to continue to innovate in the space and seek out new use cases for the platform and we are really excited to be working with Aramco on that,“ Johnson added.A timetable to open the center, which would bring Aramco's physical and virtual worlds together, was still under discussion and "in the planning stages,“ said the chief executive.Johnson pointed out that Magic Leap was "digitizing the physical space“ for industries by putting an industry's physical equipment and data into the augmented reality (AR) system, which could be meticulously examined, discussed, and enhanced.Based in southern Florida, Magic Leap signed a multiyear partnership agreement with