Saudi Gazette report
Los Angeles — Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense, discussed partnership opportunities in separate meetings with Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Kevin Tsujihara and CEO of the augmented reality company Magic Leap Rony Abovitz here on Tuesday.
During the meeting with Tsujihara and senior officials of a number of the Group’s subsidiaries, the Crown Prince discussed partnership opportunities in the fields of media, entertainment, and culture, as well as training opportunities for Saudi youth.
Abovitz briefed the Crown Prince on Magic Leap’s products.
They also reviewed opportunities for partnership and investments in a number of projects in the Kingdom.
Last month, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced that it will invest $400 million in Magic Leap.
Magic Leap is the developer of “mixed reality” headsets, races to get ahead of competing efforts from Apple, Microsoft and Facebook. “The Magic Leap team and I are happy to welcome the Public Investment Fund and the other new investors to the Magic Leap family. We look forward to having them join us on our journey to build an amazing future,” Rony Abovitz, the former surgical roboticist who founded Magic Leap, said in a statement last month.
On Monday, Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, Sir Richard Branson and the management teams of Virgin Group’s space businesses and Virgin Hyperloop One entered the next stage of their relationship.
The Mojave visit of the Crown Prince follows last October’s announcement that the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) intends to invest approximately $1 billion into Virgin Group’s US based space companies, Virgin Galactic, The Spaceship Company and Virgin Orbit.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is at the forefront of innovative thinking around many new technologies as part of its Vision 2030. This is particularly true in two areas where we at Virgin are particularly focused; next generation space travel and Hyperloop technology. We look forward to extending these relationships further and welcoming their talented engineers into our Hyperloop test program,” Branson said.
