Background: Johnson joined Microsoft in 2014 and most recently served as executive vice president of business development. Before her stint with Redmond, she spent nearly 25 years at Qualcomm in various leadership roles across marketing, sales, engineering and business development.
Magic Leap has found its next chief executive officer. The mixed reality specialist on Tuesday said veteran tech executive Peggy Johnson would become its new CEO effective August 1, 2020.
If you recall, Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz announced in May that he would be stepping down from his role as CEO as the company pivoted in order to deliver a spatial computing platform to enterprise customers. Abovitz hung around during the search and will be helping with the transition.
Abovitz said they were fortunate to have a number of qualified candidates express interest in the position but as soon as Johnson threw her name into the hat, there was no question that she was "absolutely the best person to lead this company into the future."
Magic Leap, once a darling of the tech industry, spent several years and billions of investor dollars to build its first mixed reality headset. The Magic Leap One launched in the US in August 2018 but fell way short of what consumers had expected from the device. A high price tag, an extremely limited field of view and a lack of polish in some of the early demos were just a few of the issues that reviewers found with the headset.
Magic Leap's future in enterprise now sits in Johnson's lap and she seems confident in the task at hand. "Magic Leap's technological foundation is undeniable, and there is no question that has the potential to shape the future of XR and computing," Johnson said.
Image credit: Bram Van Oost, Anthony Bolante