The manufacturer of waveguide optics DigiLens announced new investments

DigiLens is one of several companies creating waveguide optics and positioning it for use in XR. Waveguide optics allow you to create extremely compact optics for near vision, the thickness of which does not exceed the thickness of the lenses in a pair of glasses.

The company announced the second closing of the Series D investment round, which was attended by Corning, a large materials company known for its Gorilla Glass product, which is widely used in smartphones, and Optimas Capital Management, a strategic investment division of Goertek, which is a major manufacturer of XR devices.

Series D investments have attracted more than $50 million. The first round closure was originally announced back in November 2021 and valued the company at $500 million, according to DigiLens.

Taking into account additional investments from Corning and Optimas Capital Management in the second round, the company said that its value is estimated at $ 530 million. The full round includes a number of strategic investors, including Samsung Electronics, Diamond Edge Ventures and others.

In the investment round, the startup's valuation is determined by the price of each share multiplied by the total number of shares of the company. It is quite rare for companies to name their valuation directly, except when they believe that the valuation shows that the company is in a strong and dynamic position.

In this case, this is exactly the case; since waveguide optics is expected to become an essential component of AR headsets aimed at mass adoption. DigiLens claims to be the leading supplier of this technology. The purpose of publicly announcing a major valuation of the company is likely to alienate competitors, forcing potential investors to think twice about who is leading the race in the AR glasses market.

The company claims that its special approach to waveguide optics — diffraction gratings made using the optical copying process — is the most cost-effective and scalable option among the available technologies. DigiLens also claims that its special manufacturing process allows for more flexible optical designs, which gives its optics advantages. In this regard, the company hopes that the first products based on its technology will appear on the market within the next year.

However, every company in this industry makes similar statements about technology and scalability; which of them is right will become clear only after mass devices appear on the market.

Last year, DigiLens introduced Design v1, a modular reference headset that experts believe will accelerate the development and implementation of AR glasses. The device is based on the Snapdragon XR2 with a claimed diagonal field of view of 50°.