South Korea’s LetinAR is building optics behind AI glasses

Imagine you’re riding a motorcycle astatine 160 kilometers per hr erstwhile an arrow appears, floating connected the roadworthy ahead, telling you precisely wherever to turn. No phone, nary dashboard. Just your helmet, and a lens the size of a thumbnail.

This is not a conception video. It’s heading to European roads arsenic aboriginal arsenic this year. And it’s 1 aboriginal glimpse of wherever astute glasses are heading.

Over the past fewer years, Big Tech has been softly (and not truthful quietly) placing its bets. Meta has been selling AI-enabled Ray-Ban glasses since 2023, Google is building Android XR, and Apple is expected to participate the market. Last week, Samsung was reportedly acceptable to unveil its archetypal AI-capable astute glasses, co-designed with Gentle Monster, astatine a Galaxy Unpacked lawsuit successful London this July. China’s Huawei, Alibaba, Xiaomi and others are each moving too.

The numbers bespeak the momentum. Global AI glasses shipments surged to 8.7 cardinal units successful 2025, up much than 300% from the anterior year, and analysts task that fig volition transverse 15 cardinal this year, per Omdia.

Suppliers and constituent makers of AI-powered smartglasses are besides positioning themselves for what comes next. One of the companies, a South Korean startup called LetinAR, has spent the past decennary gathering the optical exertion that could marque each of this really wearable.

The LG Electronics-backed startup conscionable secured $18.5 cardinal from Korea Development Bank and the South Korean retail giant’s task arm, Lotte Ventures, among others, up of its planned 2027 IPO successful South Korea.

Its erstwhile investor, LG Electronics, has since begun processing its ain AI astute glasses, according to a local media report, which is simply a motion of however earnestly South Korea’s largest user electronics institution takes the category.

CEO Jaehyeok Kim and CTO Jeonghun Ha, who person been friends since precocious school, founded LetinAR unneurotic successful 2016.

Image Credits:LetinAR /

The lens that makes it wearable

LetinAR doesn't marque the glasses. It makes the portion that makes the glasses work. The optical module, the tiny lens constituent that projects images into your tract of vision, is what determines whether a brace of astute glasses feels similar a sci-fi headset oregon thing you'd really deterioration to work, Ha told TechCrunch. It has to beryllium light, thin, and power-efficient, portion inactive delivering a sharp, wide image. Getting each of that close successful a azygous component, tiny capable to acceptable wrong a normal-looking frame, is the cardinal engineering situation of the full industry. That's what LetinAR is building.

“We spot AI glasses arsenic that adjacent platform,” Kim said. “And the optical module is the hardest portion to get close arsenic AI glasses makers volition request a lens that is thinner, lighter, and much power-efficient than what exists today.”

The co-founders said LetineAR wants to beryllium the institution those glasses makers call. The institution calls its exertion PinTILT: a mode of arranging tiny optical elements wrong a lens truthful that airy is directed precisely wherever it needs to go, into the user's eye, alternatively than scattered successful each direction.

Think of a TV. It broadcasts airy crossed an full room, but lone the airy that really reaches your eyes matters. Most existing astute lens technologies, peculiarly a ascendant attack called waveguide, enactment a spot similar that TV, splitting and spreading airy crossed the afloat lens to make a wide image. The effect is simply a bladed lens, but an inefficient one. A batch of airy gets thrown distant earlier it ever reaches the eye, which means dimmer images and, critically, a artillery that drains fast, Ha explained.

The alternative, a mirror-based attack known arsenic birdbath, delivers airy much straight to the eye, but the operation is bulky, making it astir intolerable to acceptable wrong thing that looks similar a mean brace of glasses.

PinTILT sidesteps that tradeoff, Ha said. By focusing lone connected the airy that tin really participate the oculus and cautiously engineering the space of each tiny constituent wrong the lens, LetinAR claims it tin nutrient a brighter representation successful a thinner, lighter signifier factor, utilizing little power. In a class wherever each gram and each hr of artillery beingness matters, that's the occupation the full manufacture has been trying to solve.

In the space, determination are a fig of peers similar WaveOptics, DigiLens and Lumus.

Customers

Its modules are already shipping. LetinAR counts Japan's NTT QONOQ Devices and Dynabook, formerly known arsenic Toshiba Client Solutions, among its customers, giving the institution existent manufacturing acquisition astatine scale. It is successful talks with Big Tech companies connected R&D of next-generation AI glasses, though it declined to sanction them.

One of LetinAR's astir demanding customers is Aegis Rider, a Swiss deeptech institution spun retired of ETH Zurich's Computer Vision Lab. Aegis Rider is gathering an AI-powered AR helmet that displays navigation, speed, and information alerts straight successful a motorcycle rider's tract of vision, not floating connected the visor, but anchored to the roadworthy itself, arsenic if the accusation is physically painted connected the satellite ahead.

LetinAR's module is wrong the helmet. Aegis Rider is targeting the EU and Swiss markets successful 2026.

The latest funding, which brings the full raised to $41.7 million, volition spell toward scale-up arsenic the AI glasses marketplace shifts from aboriginal adopters to wide production, said Kim, adding that hardware devices, specified arsenic AI glasses, are the adjacent furniture that volition bring AI into mundane life.