Imagine this: You're speeding on a motorcycle at 160 km/h, and suddenly a navigation arrow "appears" on the road ahead, precisely indicating the turn. No phone, no need to look down at the dashboard— all the information is naturally integrated into your vision through a thumb-sized mirror inside your helmet.

This isn't a science fiction scene—it's a real scenario that could hit European roads as early as this year. And it's just an early glimpse of the smart glasses evolution wave.

Over the past few years, tech giants have already quietly (sometimes not so quietly) bet on this track: Meta has been continuously iterating AI-powered Ray-Ban glasses since 2023; Google is building an Android XR ecosystem; Apple's entry has been widely speculated; last week, it was reported that Samsung will partner with Gentle Monster to launch its first AI smart glasses at the London Galaxy Unpacked event in July. The Chinese side is also active, with Huawei, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and others accelerating their layout.

Market data confirms this trend. According to Omdia, global AI glasses shipments surged to 8.7 million units in 2025, a more than 300% year-on-year increase; analysts predict this number will exceed 15 million units this year.

As whole-device brands compete for positions, upstream supply chains are also quietly securing their spots. LetinAR, a South Korean startup, is one of them—a company that has been focused on solving the most critical challenge of smart glasses: how to make the optical module both thin and energy-efficient while delivering clear and sharp images.

Recently, LetinAR completed a new $18.5 million funding round, with investors including the Korea Development Bank and Lotte Venture Capital, preparing for a 2027 IPO in South Korea. Interestingly, its early investor, LG Electronics, according to local media reports, has already launched its own AI smart glasses project—this further shows that South Korea's leading consumer electronics companies are rapidly increasing their attention to this product category.

The two co-founders of LetinAR, Jaehyeok Kim and Jeonghun Ha, were friends since high school and founded the company together in 2016. They don't manufacture complete glasses but focus on key components that make glasses truly wearable: optical modules.

"Smart glasses are the next platform-level interface," Kim said, "and the optical module is the hardest part—manufacturers need to be thinner, lighter, and more energy-efficient than existing solutions, while maintaining image quality."

Their solution is called PinTILT: by precisely arranging micro-optical elements inside the lens, light can be accurately "aimed" at the eye, rather than scattering in all directions like traditional solutions.

To put it simply: traditional waveguide technology is like a living room TV, where light covers the entire lens, but only a small portion actually enters the eye, wasting a lot of light energy, resulting in dim images and high power consumption. Another reflective approach (birdbath) can efficiently guide light, but it has a bulky structure, making it hard to fit into the frame of everyday glasses.

The idea behind PinTILT is to "only create useful light"—focusing only on the portion of light that enters the pupil and precisely adjusting the angle of each micro-component. The result is brighter imaging and lower power consumption in a thinner and lighter form. In the smart glasses category, where every gram and hour of battery life matters, this is precisely the core issue that the industry is collectively striving to solve.

Currently, LetinAR's modules have achieved mass production and delivery, with clients including Japan's NTT QONOQ Devices and Dynabook, formerly part of Toshiba's client solutions business, accumulating large-scale manufacturing experience. The company is also discussing next-generation AI glasses joint R&D with several tech giants, although specific names are not yet disclosed.

One high-demand client is Swiss deep-tech company Aegis Rider (originating from the computer vision lab at ETH Zurich). They are developing an AI-driven AR motorcycle helmet that can "anchor" navigation, speed, and safety alerts onto real roads, rather than simply floating on the visor—making it seem as if the information is literally "drawn" in the world ahead. LetinAR's optical modules are the visual core of this system. The product is planned to launch in the EU and Switzerland in 2026.

After this round of financing, LetinAR has raised a total of $41.7 million. Kim said the funds will be used for capacity expansion to meet the critical turning point when the AI glasses market moves from early adopters to mass consumers. "Hardware devices, such as AI glasses, will be the next layer of carrying artificial intelligence into daily life."