Last year, Avegant announced it was working on new technology for augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) with its Light Field Display, with the development kits for the technology shipping in late 2017. Now the company is seeking to further develop its technology with a new investment funding round.
Avegant has announced the successful closing of $12M in Series AA funding from new investors Walden SKT Venture Fund and China Walden Venture Investments, as well as previous investors.
The money will be used to further develop its next-generation display technologies for the consumer market, building on the existing light field technology to create a high-resolution, low latency and high brightness retinal displays.
Ed Tang, CEO of Avegant, said, “The consumer AR industry faces significant challenges developing displays that are high resolution, small form factor, large field-of-view, light field, and low power. The industry is excited about our unique solutions to these technical challenges, which will enable previously impossible AR experiences.”
Dr. Om Nalamasu, President of Applied Ventures and Chief Technology Officer of Applied Materials, commented: “Applied is excited to use its materials engineering technologies to enable new inflections like AR/VR, which require advanced displays, high-performance computing and lots of memory. We are working with Avegant to accelerate the development of their light field technology to create compelling AR applications.”
“Many companies are trying to solve multiple, very difficult technical problems to bring AR experiences to consumers,” said Andrew Kau, Managing Director of Walden International. “We chose to invest in Avegant because their solutions elegantly tackle these problems in creative ways that consider human factors without losing sight of manufacturability.”
It is not currently known when Avegant’s light field technology will see a commercial release, though some developers and researchers are already working with the technology.
For future coverage of Avegant and other new development in VR and AR tecnology, keep checking back with VRFocus.