Rony Abovitz

Founder & CEO, Sun and Thunder

Bio Current as of July 14, 2022

Rony Abovitz is a technology founder, pioneer, inventor, visionary leader and strategic advisor with a diverse background in computer-assisted surgery, surgical robotics, AI, computer graphics/visualization, sensing, advanced systems, media/animation, spatial audio, and spatial computing/XR. He has a strong intellectual property background, having built multi-thousand patent portfolios in his start-ups.

Rony is currently the founder and CEO of a new creative tech stealth incubator, Sun and Thunder, and its first spin-off company, SynthBee, Inc. He is also a Senior Advisor at the Boston Consulting Group, working with Fortune 500 CEOs and growth-tech founders in the areas of deeptech, medtech, biotech, AI, e-commerce, blockchains, crypto/NFT, telecommunications, web/mobile, games/media, sensing, robotics, lasers, and overall innovation.

Passionate about imagining and creating, Rony has a strong history of creating new technology fields and businesses from the start-up garage onward including Magic Leap, the world’s leading spatial computing company he founded back in 2011. Magic Leap invented and developed the core technologies of spatial computing and helped to invent and define the overall field. Under Rony’s leadership, the company launched the first of their kind wearable spatial computing systems: the Magic Leap One, Creator Edition and Magic Leap 1 Enterprise, both of which are currently in use at Fortune 500 companies, major universities, hospitals, developers, defense, and governments around the world. At Magic Leap several world’s first were achieved: Helio, the first spatial computing web browser, MICA (human-centered AI), Magicverse software and tools, Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders (first AAA game for AR based spatial computing), the first wearable multi-focal XR system, the first avatar co-presence communication call, and hundreds of early applications and proof-of-concepts of the possibility of spatial computing.

Rony and his team also led the development of multiple generations of spatial computing systems, including the Magic Leap 2, which became public in late 2021. The Magic Leap 2 recently was award one of the world’s most prestigious design awards, the IF Design Gold Award, which was presented in Berlin in May 2022: https://ifdesign.com/en/winner-ranking/project/magic-leap-2/348548

Rony is Magic Leap’s founder and was the first CEO until August 2020. He also helped to recruit Peggy Johnson, a senior executive at rival Microsoft, to become his successor as Magic Leap’s CEO.

Prior to Magic Leap Rony co-founded MAKO Surgical in 2004 (successful IPO on NASDAQ in 2008), a medical software and robotics company specializing in manufacturing surgical robotic arm assistance technology utilized by hospitals worldwide. A number of world’s first included the first haptic robotic-assisted surgery, the first US FDA clearances for this surgical robotics sector, and the use of robotics to enable new and innovative minimally invasive implants.

Rony served as CTO & SVP of R&D and Chief Visionary Officer before the company was acquired by Stryker Corporation in 2013 for $1.65 billion. The MAKO Surgical Robotics platform has been a worldwide success for Stryker, helping to drive its significant growth and market valuation. It is also still the world’s leading robotic platform for orthopedic surgery.

He is a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, a 2x World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, and has spoken and lectured at universities and technology conferences around the world. He has undergraduate (mechanical engineering) and graduate (biomedical engineering) degrees from the University of Miami. Rony also loves guitar, bass, recording, animation, kayaking, scuba, hiking, archery, and is a friend of animals and robots. He and his family live in South Florida.