Augmented reality glasses maker Xreal has raised $60 million in the latest round, Chief Executive Officer Qi said in an interview. The latest funding comes from a major supply chain partner, which he declined to name.
“This will help us expand our production capacity and R&D,” he said, adding that the company has enough capacity to meet demand for glasses this year, but not enough to meet orders for 2025. added that funding is needed.
Xreal hopes to pave the way for augmented reality, a technology that overlays data and images on top of views of the real world. The company accounted for about half of the pure AR device market in the third quarter of last year, according to research firm IDC. In the larger market for combining virtual reality and AR, known as mixed reality, Meta is the leader, followed by Sony Group. and ByteDance Inc.’s Xreal account for approximately 4% of the total market.
Chi said his company could produce between 500,000 and 1 million units this year. This investment is expected to enable him to produce 2 million devices next year. Chi said the company expects sales of $100 million to $150 million this year and $200 million to $300 million in 2025, and hopes to bring Xreal to the U.S. stock market within two years. .
The seven-year-old company currently employs approximately 600 people and is based in Beijing. The company’s Air Glasses display notifications, games, and videos in the wearer’s field of vision. Chi said Xreal’s product is superior to more expensive technology from Magic Leap Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which sell a headset called HoloLens.
“2023 has been a very good year, with the market size almost doubling,” he said. The company says it makes most of its sales through the Amazon.com website, where it offers AR glasses for just a few hundred dollars. However, the company expects its latest model, the Air 2 Ultra, to drive future sales.
“We’re likely to be able to produce 50,000 Ultra units this year,” Chee said, adding that cheaper models “are definitely easier to sell” and that mass consumers won’t have as many bells and whistles as they wanted. He added that he wasn’t looking for functionality. , your search may reveal competing products.
“In AR, we think he’s three to five years ahead of them,” Chee said. “But they are catching up. So we have to catch up and push the boundaries.”
During development of the Vision Pro, Apple also worked on lightweight AR-only glasses similar to what Xreal offers. The company paused work on that device because it didn’t think the technology was ready yet. Meta and Google have said they’re planning their own consumer AR glasses for release in the coming years.
