South Korea’s LetinAR is building optics behind AI glasses
South Korea’s LetinAR is building optics behind AI glasses
韩国 LetinAR：打造 AI 眼镜背后的光学核心
Imagine you’re riding a motorcycle at 160 kilometers per hour when an arrow appears, floating on the road ahead, telling you exactly where to turn. No phone, no dashboard. Just your helmet, and a lens the size of a thumbnail. This is not a concept video. It’s heading to European roads as early as this year. And it’s one early glimpse of where smart glasses are heading.
想象一下，你正以每小时 160 公里的速度骑着摩托车，前方路面上浮现出一个箭头，准确地告诉你该往哪里转弯。没有手机，没有仪表盘，只有你的头盔和一枚指甲盖大小的镜片。这并非概念视频，它最早将于今年出现在欧洲的道路上。这也是智能眼镜未来发展方向的一个早期缩影。
Over the past few years, Big Tech has been quietly (and not so quietly) placing its bets. Meta has been selling AI-enabled Ray-Ban glasses since 2023, Google is building Android XR, and Apple is expected to enter the market. Last week, Samsung was reportedly set to unveil its first AI-capable smart glasses, co-designed with Gentle Monster, at a Galaxy Unpacked event in London this July. China’s Huawei, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and others are all moving too.
过去几年里，科技巨头们一直在悄悄（有时也并不那么悄悄）地进行布局。Meta 自 2023 年起就开始销售具备 AI 功能的 Ray-Ban 眼镜，谷歌正在构建 Android XR，苹果也预计将进入该市场。据报道，三星计划于今年 7 月在伦敦举行的 Galaxy Unpacked 发布会上，推出与 Gentle Monster 共同设计的首款 AI 智能眼镜。中国的华为、阿里巴巴、小米等公司也都在积极行动。
The numbers reflect the momentum. Global AI glasses shipments surged to 8.7 million units in 2025, up more than 300% from the prior year, and analysts project that figure will cross 15 million this year, per Omdia. Suppliers and component makers of AI-powered smart glasses are also positioning themselves for what comes next.
数据反映了这一增长势头。根据 Omdia 的数据，2025 年全球 AI 眼镜出货量激增至 870 万台，较上年增长超过 300%，分析师预计今年这一数字将突破 1500 万台。AI 智能眼镜的供应商和零部件制造商们也正在为接下来的市场机遇做好准备。
One of the companies, a South Korean startup called LetinAR, has spent the last decade building the optical technology that could make all of this actually wearable. The LG Electronics-backed startup just secured $18.5 million from Korea Development Bank and the South Korean retail giant’s venture arm, Lotte Ventures, among others, ahead of its planned 2027 IPO in South Korea. Its previous investor, LG Electronics, has since begun developing its own AI smart glasses, according to a local media report, which is a sign of how seriously South Korea’s largest consumer electronics company takes the category. LetinAR CEO Jaehyeok Kim and CTO Jeonghun Ha, who have been friends since high school, founded the company together in 2016.
其中一家名为 LetinAR 的韩国初创公司，在过去十年里一直致力于研发能让这一切真正实现“可穿戴化”的光学技术。这家由 LG 电子支持的初创公司刚刚获得了来自韩国产业银行（Korea Development Bank）和韩国零售巨头乐天旗下的风险投资部门 Lotte Ventures 等机构的 1850 万美元融资，为 2027 年在韩国的 IPO 计划做准备。据当地媒体报道，其之前的投资者 LG 电子也已开始研发自家的 AI 智能眼镜，这表明韩国最大的消费电子公司对该领域的高度重视。LetinAR 的首席执行官 Jaehyeok Kim 和首席技术官 Jeonghun Ha 是高中时代的好友，两人于 2016 年共同创立了该公司。
The lens that makes it wearable
让眼镜实现“可穿戴”的镜片
LetinAR doesn’t make the glasses. It makes the part that makes the glasses work. The optical module, the tiny lens component that projects images into your field of vision, is what determines whether a pair of smart glasses feels like a sci-fi headset or something you’d actually wear to work, Ha told TechCrunch. It has to be light, thin, and power-efficient, while still delivering a sharp, clear image. Getting all of that right in a single component, small enough to fit inside a normal-looking frame, is the central engineering challenge of the entire industry. That’s what LetinAR is building.
LetinAR 不生产眼镜，它生产的是让眼镜发挥作用的核心部件。Ha 在接受 TechCrunch 采访时表示，光学模组——即那个将图像投射到你视野中的微小镜片组件——决定了智能眼镜究竟是像科幻头盔，还是像你可以真正佩戴去上班的日常用品。它必须轻便、纤薄且节能，同时还要提供清晰锐利的图像。将所有这些特性集成到一个足够小、能装进普通镜框的组件中，是整个行业面临的核心工程挑战。而这正是 LetinAR 正在攻克的方向。
“We see AI glasses as that next platform,” Kim said. “And the optical module is the hardest part to get right as AI glasses makers will need a lens that is thinner, lighter, and more power-efficient than what exists today.” The co-founders said LetinAR wants to be the company those glasses makers call.
“我们将 AI 眼镜视为下一个平台，”Kim 说道，“而光学模组是最难攻克的部分，因为 AI 眼镜制造商需要比现有产品更薄、更轻、更节能的镜片。”两位联合创始人表示，LetinAR 希望成为那些眼镜制造商的首选合作伙伴。
The company calls its technology PinTILT: a way of arranging tiny optical elements inside a lens so that light is directed precisely where it needs to go, into the user’s eye, rather than scattered in every direction. Think of a TV. It broadcasts light across an entire room, but only the light that actually reaches your eyes matters. Most existing smart lens technologies, particularly a dominant approach called waveguide, work a bit like that TV, splitting and spreading light across the full lens to create a wide image. The result is a thin lens, but an inefficient one. A lot of light gets thrown away before it ever reaches the eye, which means dimmer images and, critically, a battery that drains fast, Ha explained.
该公司将其技术称为 PinTILT：这是一种在镜片内部排列微小光学元件的方法，使光线能够精确地投射到用户眼中，而不是向四面八方散射。想象一下电视机，它将光线投射到整个房间，但只有真正到达你眼睛的光线才是有意义的。大多数现有的智能镜片技术，特别是被称为“波导”（waveguide）的主流方案，工作原理有点像电视，通过分割和扩散光线覆盖整个镜片来创建宽幅图像。Ha 解释说，这种方案虽然能实现薄镜片，但效率低下。大量光线在到达眼睛之前就损耗了，这意味着图像更暗，更关键的是，电池消耗极快。
The alternative, a mirror-based approach known as birdbath, delivers light more directly to the eye, but the structure is bulky, making it nearly impossible to fit inside something that looks like a normal pair of glasses. PinTILT sidesteps that trade-off, Ha said. By focusing only on the light that can actually enter the eye and carefully engineering the angle of each tiny element inside the lens, LetinAR claims it can produce a brighter image in a thinner, lighter form factor, using less power. In a category where every gram and every hour of battery life matters, that’s the problem the entire industry has been trying to solve. In the space, there are a number of peers like WaveOptics, DigiLens, and Lumus.
另一种基于反射镜的方案被称为“鸟浴”（birdbath），它能更直接地将光线传送到眼睛，但结构笨重，几乎不可能装进看起来像普通眼镜的框架里。Ha 表示，PinTILT 避开了这种权衡。通过只聚焦于能够真正进入眼睛的光线，并精心设计镜片内每个微小元件的角度，LetinAR 声称可以在更薄、更轻的外形下产生更明亮的图像，且功耗更低。在每一个克重量和每一小时续航都至关重要的领域，这正是整个行业一直试图解决的问题。在该领域，还有 WaveOptics、DigiLens 和 Lumus 等竞争对手。
Customers
客户群体
Its modules are already shipping. LetinAR counts Japan’s NTT QONOQ Devices and Dynabook, formerly known as Toshiba Client Solutions, among its customers, giving the company real manufacturing experience at scale. It is in talks with Big Tech companies on R&D of next-generation AI glasses, though it declined to name them.
其模组已经开始出货。LetinAR 的客户包括日本的 NTT QONOQ Devices 和前身为东芝客户解决方案公司的 Dynabook，这为该公司提供了大规模制造的实战经验。目前，它正在与多家科技巨头商讨下一代 AI 眼镜的研发合作，但拒绝透露具体名称。
One of LetinAR’s most demanding customers is Aegis Rider, a Swiss deep tech company spun out of ETH Zurich’s Computer Vision Lab. Aegis Rider is building an AI-powered AR helmet that displays navigation, speed, and safety alerts directly in a motorcycle rider’s field of vision, not floating on the visor but anchored to the road itself, as if the information is physically painted on the world ahead. LetinAR’s module is inside the helmet. Aegis Rider is targeting the EU and Swiss markets in 2026.
LetinAR 最具挑战性的客户之一是 Aegis Rider，这是一家从苏黎世联邦理工学院（ETH Zurich）计算机视觉实验室孵化出来的瑞士深科技公司。Aegis Rider 正在打造一款 AI 驱动的 AR 头盔，它能将导航、速度和安全警报直接显示在摩托车骑手的视野中，这些信息不是浮在面罩上，而是锚定在路面上，就像信息被直接画在前方道路上一样。LetinAR 的模组就内置在这款头盔中。Aegis Rider 计划于 2026 年进入欧盟和瑞士市场。
The latest funding, which brings the total raised to $41.7 million, will go toward scale-up as the AI glasses market shifts from early adopters to mass production, said Kim, adding that hardware devices, such as AI glasses, are the next layer that will bring AI into everyday life.
Kim 表示，最新一轮融资使公司总融资额达到 4170 万美元，资金将用于扩大规模，以应对 AI 眼镜市场从早期采用者向大规模生产的转型。他补充说，像 AI 眼镜这样的硬件设备，是将 AI 带入日常生活的下一个关键载体。