Smart glasses company Even Realities achieves US$1 billion valuation with US$150 million funding led by Meituan and Tencent

Meta and Snap introduced new smart glasses last month, the latest sign that the industry is racing to put a camera and AI assistant on users’ faces. As the fast-growing market heats up, startups like Even Realities are competing against the giants.

Even Realities, a three-year-old Shenzhen-based startup, raised $150 million in a pre-Series B round led by Meituan and former backer Tencent; The round valued the startup at a valuation of $1 billion. Founder and CEO Will Wang told TechCrunch that as competitors chase camera-equipped devices built around content capture and artificial intelligence, his company is betting on the first display glasses that transmit information directly to the wearer’s line of sight without giving up privacy.

Even the early backers of these companies are mostly high-profile Chinese names – Hillhouse, Sequoia China, and Northern Light Venture Capital.

Until it was started by former Apple engineers in 2023. CEO Wang worked on the Apple Watch and iPhone; The other founders came from technology companies, and a couple came from luxury eyewear companies, including Lindberg. The startup moved quickly, launching its first product, the G1, in 2024, which Wang calls the lightest waveguide smart glasses on the market at the time.

It even surpassed its goal of 10,000 units to become the first company in the category to sell more than 10,000 pairs, according to the company’s CEO. It raised money faster than expected, and its headcount has ballooned from 30 to 40 employees in 2024 to 300 to 400 employees today.

The startup’s latest flagship phone, the G2, hit the market last November and skips the camera entirely. Instead, a display built into the frames provides the wearer with information, and is controlled by a companion ring, up to R1, which users tap and swipe to navigate.

Removing the camera is an important part of Even’s privacy philosophy, but not the whole story, Wang continued. He said smart glasses are perhaps the most widely worn personal computer devices people will ever wear. When worn on the face all day, it should feel comfortable for both the wearer and those around them, so privacy is designed into both the hardware and software. Audio features such as subtitles convert audio to text instead of storing recordings; User data is encrypted, and the infrastructure was built to meet Europe’s strict privacy standards, Wang added.

Even power users rely heavily on Conversate, a co-pilot that reads the conversation in real time, explains unfamiliar terms or quickly feeds follow-ups, and then syncs the summary to their phone.

However, Even has invested heavily in optics (display and overall visual performance), which Wang says is what sets smart glasses apart from other consumer electronics.

“With a phone or a watch, the display is just a traditional OLED or LCD screen. Smart glasses are the first product class to rely on optical displays, which requires a completely different technology stack; you have to design the microchip, the optics, and the waveguide together. This is where we’ve invested the most,” Wang said.

The company developed a proprietary optical technology called Even HAO, or Holistic Adaptive Optics, an end-to-end design that integrates the microchip, waveguide, and prescription support from the beginning, rather than combining separately designed components.

More than half of Even’s users are in the US – the fastest-growing market – as is the bulk of the developer community. The company does not sell in China yet, although it manufactures there through several factories; Its main markets are the United States, Japan, South Korea, the Middle East and Europe. “The demand there is huge, so we want to make sure we are prepared first,” Wang said.

It even sells near the top of the category in terms of price and still moves real volume, making it a profitable player in the space, Wang said. “Most of our customers are male professionals between the ages of 30 and 50. We conducted a survey and found that about a third of our users are company executives,” he added. Frames retail for $599 before taxes; Prescription lenses or a ring cost another $200 to $300, bringing the average order to nearly $1,000.