With $24M series B, Avegant Prepares to Launch Video player Headset
Sarah Schmid August 25, 2015
Avegant, a Redwood city, CA-primarily based tech startup with roots in Ann Arbor, MI, introduced this week that it has raised $ 24 million in sequence B funding. Lian Luo, a chinese cellular gaming company, led the round, with participation from the Bunting domestic Fund and returning buyers Intel Capital and NHN Investments.
Avegant’s lead shopper product is the Glyph, a transportable, Bluetooth-enabled “virtual retinal display” video participant that makes use of micromirror know-how to beam photography immediately onto a consumer’s eyeballs, mimicking the best way humans naturally understand mild. the result, says Avegant CEO Joerg Tewes, is a sharper and more vibrantly colored viewing experience.
“not like a headset that makes use of LED lights, ours has a screenless show,” said Avegant co-founder and chief technique officer Edward Tang, including that the Glyph makes use of two million microscopic mirrors to reach this effect. “It offers you a vivid, movie theater expertise on the go, and it plugs into any device.” (investigate cross-check the video below for extra on how the Glyph works.)
Tang and Allan Evans co-founded the corporate in 2013. although they met whereas each had been still at the college of Michigan, Evans also labored on the Pacific Northwest nationwide Laboratory, spearheading analysis that uncovered most of the core technologies used to boost the Glyph. in the meantime, Tang helped boost a new electron beam lithography program and fabricated devices for micro-electrical-mechanical programs lab courses at U-M. Tang and Evans hang dozens of patents between them.
though the company relocated from Michigan to the Bay area closing yr, Tang mentioned Ann Arbor used to be the best place to begin Avegant: “There’s a great entrepreneurial spirit there,” he explained. “people truly consider technology, and there are many proficient folks locally. The Michigan Angel Fund was once instrumental in getting us off the ground, and we still have quite a lot of Michigan buyers.”
After a year spent developing the product, Avegant offered its early Glyph prototype at the client Electronics convey in Las Vegas in January 2014. It went on to win a mobile technology award there, and soon accrued additional accolades from South via Southwest Interactive, MacWorld/iWorld, and CNN.
In January 2014, Avegant also launched probably the most a success Michigan-based Kickstarter venture of the year—it far surpassed its purpose of $ 250,000, raising a whopping $ 1.5 million from three,331 backers—and commenced tweaking the Glyph to get it production-prepared. That process is now wrapping up, Tewes said. a part of the collection B cash might be used to finalize the Glyph and ship it to Kickstarter supporters, and the corporate hopes to obtain loads of remarks from them. Avegant expects to start sending out devices q4.
the corporate has additionally formed a distribution partnership with investor Lian Luo and plans to leverage its network of Apple-licensed stores to get the Glyph into the arms of chinese language consumer electronics clients. “It in reality hurries up our go-to-market strategy in China,” Tewes said.
Avegant, which has about 30 employees and plans to hire 20 more through the top of the year, can even use the sequence B funding for product construction and advertising efforts that target commuters and customary vacationers.
“we now have a very compelling product and advanced screenless retinal imaging technology,” Tewes said. “We’ll be probably the most first, if not the first, with this type of answer for cell media consumption. There’s no more thing adore it available on the market.”
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