Ever considered how weird it would be to see an actual elephant in the room? How 'bout a baby elephant in the palm of your hand? Extra weird, and extra cool. That's what newly funded, secretive startup Magic Leap can do with its augmented reality glasses. We know VR headsets, such as the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear, that can manipulate our visual experience by transforming our world into a digital realm. But Magic Leap does the opposite, adding digital pieces of visual stimuli into our normal POV. Since the company announced its product (but left any details at home), many investors have jumped on board, leaving Magic Leap with a $542 million round of funding.

The Florida-based startup, led by Google, also includes investors from Andreessen Horowitz, KKR, and Legendary Entertainment (Sci Tech Today). Magic Leap, with no current products available to consumers and no current revenue, has a worth of $2 billion. Gartner analyst Brian Blau, uses this as reason to question Magic Leap, saying “Until we see the device, you have to be a little skeptical”. But let's face it, as long as Google remains the head honcho investor, Magic Leap's vision has a chance to rapidly enhance the technology industry.

According to The New York Times, Magic Leap's technique, called a “dynamic digitized lightfield signal”, involves “displaying rich interactive graphics alongside what people see naturally”. This basically means the images become part of your environment around you, rather than displaying images onto glasses or projecting them onto a flat screen. It transcends mobile computing, virtual reality, and augmented reality; but we're still not sure how. The company claims it has combined “hardware, software, sensors, core processors, and a few things that just need to remain a mystery”.

This “light, wearable device” is also capturing the curiosity of film producers looking to invest in 3D films, and Google has possible plans to tie the technology in with its Google Glass smartglasses. The possibilities for Magic Leap show great potential, despite skeptics like Blau. It's founder hopes Magic Leap becomes “a creative hub for gamers, game designers, writers, coders, musicians, filmmakers, and artists”. Although there is no target release date right now, expect to hear a lot more about Magic Leap in 2015.