Magic Leap Taps Microsoft's Peggy Johnson as New CEO -- Update

By Dave Sebastian 

Augmented-reality headset maker Magic Leap Inc. named Peggy Johnson, a top Microsoft Corp. official, as its new chief executive officer, as the company tries to shift its focus from the consumer market to enterprise customers.

Ms. Johnson served as executive vice president of business development at Microsoft, a role in which she was the Redmond, Wash., company's top deal maker, managed relationships with external partners and had oversight of the M12 corporate venture fund.

She will succeed Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz in the role Aug. 1. Mr. Abovitz, who in May said he was stepping down, will remain CEO during the transition period.

Ms. Johnson joined Microsoft in 2014 and was one of three women on the company's senior leadership, according to Microsoft's website. Microsoft said Ms. Johnson's last day at the company was Tuesday. Major acquisitions during her tenure include the roughly $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn Corp. in 2016 and $7.5 billion purchase of GitHub Inc. in 2018.

Before joining Microsoft, Ms. Johnson was at Qualcomm Inc. for 24 years, holding leadership positions spanning engineering, sales, marketing and business development.

Mr. Abovitz founded Magic Leap in 2011 and the Florida-based company has struggled in recent years to obtain wide adoption for its flagship headset product. In April, Mr. Abovitz said the company laid off a number of its staff as it aimed to cut costs amid the Covid-19 pandemic. He said he stepped down to let a new CEO lead the company's shift to targeting business-related customers.

The spatial-computing startup has raised $3.48 billion in funding, including $350 million this year, according to PitchBook data. The company was valued at about $6.69 billion as of April 2019, the data show. Its investors include Alphabet Inc.'s venture arm GV, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Qualcomm Ventures.

Augmented reality, or AR, has transitioned during the pandemic from intriguing experiment to an everyday tool across various industries. Employees who aren't able to travel due to coronavirus-related restrictions have used the technology, which imposes digital images onto views of the real world, to instruct each other in the production process without standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

Write to Dave Sebastian at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 07, 2020 14:12 ET (18:12 GMT)

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