South Korea's LetinAR Raises $18.5M to Power the Optics Inside Next‑Gen AI Glasses

LetinAR, the decade‑old South Korean startup developing optical modules for AI‑powered smart glasses, has raised $18.5 million in a new funding round led by Korea Development Bank, with participation from Lotte Ventures, the investment arm of South Korean retail conglomerate Lotte Group, and other investors. The round brings the company's total capital raised to $41.7 million and comes as global shipments of AI‑powered smart glasses are accelerating faster than most of the industry expected.

The company was founded in 2016 by CEO Jaehyeok Kim and CTO Jeonghun Ha, who have been friends since high school. Both have spent a decade solving what they describe as the hardest engineering problem in wearable technology: how to build an optical module that is thin enough to fit inside normal‑looking glasses, bright enough to be useful in daylight, light enough to wear for hours, and efficient enough not to drain a battery in 90 minutes.

What LetinAR Builds and Why It Is Difficult

LetinAR does not manufacture finished smart glasses. It manufactures the component that makes smart glasses actually work: the optical module, a precision‑engineered lens assembly that projects digital images directly into the wearer's field of vision. This is the part of the product that determines whether a pair of AI glasses feels like a natural extension of human perception or an uncomfortable science experiment.

Getting that balance right has defeated many engineering teams. The two dominant approaches in the industry both carry significant drawbacks.

Waveguide optics, the most widely used method, spread light across the full surface of the lens using multiple internal reflections. The resulting lens can be made thin and reasonably lightweight, but a significant portion of the light is lost before it reaches the eye. That optical inefficiency translates directly into dimmer images and faster battery drain, since the display source must work harder to compensate.

Birdbath optics, a mirror‑based alternative, deliver light to the eye far more directly and produce brighter images with better color accuracy. But the physical structure required to achieve that efficiency is bulky, making it nearly impossible to integrate into frames that look and feel like conventional eyewear.

LetinAR's proprietary technology, called PinTILT, is a hybrid architecture that the company claims sidesteps both trade‑offs. PinTILT uses an array of precisely angled microscopic optical elements embedded within the lens substrate to direct light specifically toward the eye, rather than spreading it across the full lens area. By targeting only the light that can actually enter the pupil, the system achieves higher brightness in a thinner form factor while consuming less power than waveguide‑based alternatives.

Key technical characteristics of the PinTILT platform include:

• Lenses produced using a high‑efficiency injection molding process, which requires fewer assembly steps than waveguide or birdbath manufacturing and delivers better cost economics at volume
• Up to 60 percent lighter than competing AR optical systems, including diffractive optical element and holographic optical element waveguides, according to the company
• Wider field of view than comparable waveguide designs, achieved through a total internal reflection angle that extends the image projection area
• Compatible with multiple display types including microOLED, LCoS, and MicroLED, giving customers design flexibility
• Solid injection‑molded plastic structure that eliminates the need for additional protective covers or rigid frames

Customers Already in Production

LetinAR is not a pre‑revenue optics company positioning for a future market. Its modules are already shipping across multiple commercial partnerships.

Japan's NTT QONOQ Devices, a subsidiary of NTT Group and one of Japan's largest telecommunications infrastructure companies, is among the confirmed customers. Dynabook, formerly Toshiba Client Solutions, is another. Both represent demand for AI glasses components in serious commercial deployment contexts, not research prototypes.

The most technically demanding application currently in production is a partnership with Aegis Rider, a Swiss deep tech company that spun out of the Computer Vision Laboratory at ETH Zurich. Aegis Rider is developing an AI‑powered augmented reality motorcycle helmet that uses LetinAR's optical module to project navigation arrows, speed readings, and safety alerts directly into the rider's line of sight, with the information appearing to be anchored to the road ahead rather than overlaid on the visor. The product is targeting a commercial launch in the European and Swiss markets in 2026.

LetinAR is also in active discussions with several major technology companies on research and development for next‑generation AI glasses, though the company has declined to name them.

The Market Behind the Round

The numbers that frame this investment are significant. Global shipments of AI‑powered smart glasses reached 8.7 million units in 2025, a year‑over‑year increase of more than 300 percent, according to market research firm Omdia. Analysts project shipments will exceed 15 million units in 2026, continuing a trajectory that has made the AI glasses category one of the fastest‑growing segments in consumer hardware.

Major technology companies including Meta, Google, Samsung, and Apple are all investing in the category, creating a growing base of potential customers for the optical components that make those products function. LG Electronics, which is also a previous investor in LetinAR, has since begun developing its own AI smart glasses, reinforcing the signal that South Korea's largest consumer electronics company treats this as a strategic product category rather than an experimental one.

LetinAR competes in the optical component space against WaveOptics, DigiLens, and Lumus, all of which are developing alternative approaches to the same fundamental challenge of projecting high‑quality images through a wearable lens.

Use of Funds and IPO Timeline

According to CEO Kim, the $18.5 million round will go toward scaling production as the AI glasses market transitions from early adopters to the mass production phase. The company is positioning itself as the optical module supplier that AI glasses manufacturers call when they need a component ready for volume shipment, not a research partner still working through engineering challenges.

LetinAR is targeting a public listing on a South Korean stock exchange in 2027. That timeline is consistent with the pace of commercial traction the company is building through its current customer relationships and the broader acceleration of AI glasses demand.

Learn more about LetinAR and PinTILT technology at their official site