RECHOVOT, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lumus Ltd., a leading developer of augmented reality (AR) wearable displays, announced today that it has completed a $45 million investment round with an additional $30 million in funding from top-tier strategic investors including Quanta and HTC. Led by Quanta Computer, a global notebook computer ODM company based in Taiwan, the Series C round also included investments from consumer electronics innovator HTC and other strategic investors. Lumus plans to use the new financing to expand development, operations, and marketing of its groundbreaking, transparent wearable display technology for the AR and smart eyewear industry. Earlier this year – and as part of this round - the company received $15 million in funding led by Shanda Group and Crystal-Optech.
Lumus makes the optical engine that empowers AR solutions, as augmented reality rapidly becomes an “essential gateway to customer engagement,” according to an IDC study released earlier this month, and could become an everyday technology for more than a billion consumers within the next five years. IDC predicts that 30 percent of Global 2000 companies will begin incorporating AR and virtual reality (VR) into their marketing programs during 2017. With market size projected to reach $90 billion by 2020, remarkable growth in the AR market is projected for years to come.
Founded in 2000, with a mission to create optics that transform the way people interact with their reality, Lumus has been setting the standard for the underlying optical technology needed to create see-through wearable displays. Lumus serves multiple AR verticals that include health care, manufacturing logistics, avionics and, more recently, consumer products. The Lumus solution is based on its patented Light-guide Optical Element (LOE) waveguide, which combines the smallest dimension eyewear for any given field of view.
“This new funding will help Lumus continue to scale up our R&D and production in response to the growing demand from companies creating new augmented reality and mixed reality applications, including consumer electronics and smart eyeglasses,” says Lumus CEO Ben Weinberger. “We also plan to ramp up our marketing efforts in order to realize and capture the tremendous potential of our unique technology to re-envision reality in the booming AR industry.”
C.C. Leung, vice chairman and president of Quanta, says, “AR/VR is well aligned with our growth strategy and we’re pleased to invest in the Lumus optics solution for augmented reality. This is pioneering technology, and we have great confidence in Lumus as an innovator and industry leader for transparent optical displays in the AR market.”
“We are very committed to AR/VR,” says David Chang, COO of HTC. “Our current investment is aligned with HTC’s natural extension into augmented reality following our successful VIVE launch earlier this year.”
Lumus technology enables the production of wearable eyeglass displays that are compact, comfortable, and fashionable, as never before possible. The Lumus near-to-eye transparent display technology consists of a unique lens that contains an array of ultra-thin transparent reflectors—the patented Light-Guide Optical Element—and a mini-projector that injects an image into the lens, also patented. These two innovative elements are combined to offer a wide field of view, true color, daylight brightness, and a crystal clear see-through display.
Lumus was represented by lawyers Jonathan Feuchtwanger and Ido Erlich of the law firm Naschitz Brandes Amir & Co.
About Lumus
Lumus (www.lumusvision.com) transparent displays enable the fusion of the digital and physical worlds, allowing businesses and individuals to re-envision reality and maximize the potential of augmented reality and smart eyewear today. Lumus optical technology makes possible unmatched see-through performance and a wide field of view in the most natural-looking eyewear. Lumus augmented reality display technology is used by leading consumer electronics and smart-eyewear manufacturers to implement their future AR offerings. Additionally, health care, military aviation, and logistics are among the industries that rely on Lumus today for the optical technology underlying their pioneering AR applications.