Rony Abovitz: The Tech Visionary Behind Magic Leap

Major breakthroughs require commitment, time, and the resources to go the distance.

Rony Abovitz is a serial tech entrepreneur and visionary. He co-founded MAKO Surgical in 2004 — a robotics company specialising in manufacturing surgical robotic arm assistance technology utilised by hospitals worldwide. MAKO was acquired by Stryker Corporation in 2013 for $1.65 billion.

Abovitz went on to found Magic Leap — a spatial computing company which envisaged a futuristic world, many years ahead of its time. Starting out of his garage in 2010, Abovitz worked on Magic Leap at night whilst still working at MAKO during the day. He partnered with award-winning Weta Workshop in New Zealand and assembled a world-class team of creative scientists before building their own high-tech factory in the US. He remained Magic Leap’s CEO until 2020 when he helped recruit Peggy Johnson to be his successor. Abovitz remains on the Board of Directors at Magic Leap.

Now on his third startup, currently in stealth mode, Abovitz is working on more “science fiction tech,” as he puts it.

In this interview, we talk about him growing up in an immigrant family, where he gets his work ethic from, what it took to build MAKO and Magic Leap, against the odds. Here’s…