DigiLens Closes $22m Series B Funding from Sony, Foxconn and Others

DigiLens, a maker of holographic optical waveguide technology and materials for AR and VR, has closed a $22m (£18m) Series B investment round.

“It’s taken us several years to perfect our diffractive optical materials and exposure process for AR-HUD (head-up display) manufacture,” said Jonathan Waldern, DigiLens founder and CEO. “Having successfully developed our DigiLens AeroHUD, in flight now for Rockwell Collins, this new investment will accelerate our wide field of view AutoHUD for Continental, MotoHUD we demoed with BMW and EyeHUD smart glasses for new partners in both enterprise and consumer markets.”

The round included strategic investment from some major companies – like Sony, Foxconn, Continental and Panasonic. There was also venture investment from Alsop Louie Partners, Bold Capital, Nautilus Venture Partners and Dolby Family Ventures amongst others.

“The next generation display technology will be glass. Data on glass is a critical capability for augmented and mixed reality applications such as gaming, navigation, telepresence, education, industrial, medical and military,” said Gilman Louie, founder and managing director of Alsop Louie Partners and lead investor.

Dr. G. Chen, CTO at Foxconn, added: “AR is a challenge, in part, because the devices are restrained by the laws of physics and not Moore’s Law. We think diffractive optics holds the key to AR, but writing millions of tiny optic structures is best done photographically, using nano self-assembly, not expensive precision etching like HoloLens. We need to break the manufacturing price barrier.”