The optics of this aren't great for Magic Leap. AR pun not intended. Really all this does is present Nreal as a legitimate threat to a company that raised approx 100x more money* before shipping a product.
(* Magic Leap funding $2B+, nreal $16M ish)
(* Magic Leap funding $2B+, nreal $16M ish)
So "Nreal copied Magic Leap's product after Magic Leap sank billion into R&D" is an entirely plausible explanation for the comparable results despite the dramatic gap in funding.
AR/smartglasses is not a market where you will have “generics” any time soon. You’re going to have the iPhone of smartglasses which will dominate, and then everyone else will try and fail to copy. Like Facebook dominating social, then google+ failing. Or iPhone vs Android, although Android did finally manage to achieve market share thanks to googles muscle.
Tl;dr: successful startups don’t raise billions of dollars before shipping a product as mediocre as ML’s v1.