Even Realities, a three-year-old startup founded by ex-Apple engineers, raised $150 million in a pre-Series B round led by Meituan and Tencent. The deal values the Shenzhen-based company at $1 billion.
While Meta and Snap chase camera-equipped smart glasses built around content capture and AI, Even is betting on a display-first approach. Their latest flagship, the G2, skips the camera entirely. Instead, a heads-up display beams information into the wearer’s line of sight. You control it with a companion ring — the Even R1 — by tapping and swiping.
CEO Will Wang, who worked on the Apple Watch and iPhone, says removing the camera is deliberate. Smart glasses are personal devices worn on your face all day. They need to feel comfortable for the wearer and people around them. Voice features like translation transcribe audio to text rather than storing recordings. User data is encrypted.
The company developed proprietary optics called Even HAO (Holistic Adaptive Optics) — an end-to-end design that integrates the microchip, waveguide, and prescription support from the start rather than assembling separate components.
More than half of Even’s users are in the U.S., its fastest-growing market. The company doesn’t sell in China yet but manufactures there. Main markets are the U.S., Japan, South Korea, the Middle East, and Europe.
Even’s first product, the G1, launched in 2024 and became the first waveguide smart glasses to sell over 10,000 units. The company’s grown from 30-40 staff in 2024 to 300-400 today.
