South Korea’s LetinAR is developing the optics behind the AI ​​glasses

Imagine that you are riding a motorcycle at a speed of 160 kilometers per hour when an arrow appears, floating along the road, telling you where to turn. No phone, no dashboard. Just your helmet, and a lens the size of a thumbnail.

This is not an emotional movie. It will hit the streets of Europe early this year. And I’m just looking at where smart glasses are headed.

Over the past few years, Big Tech has been quietly (not so quietly) hedging its bets. Meta has been selling AI-assisted Ray-Ban sunglasses from 2023Google is build Android XRand Apple is expected to enter the market. Last week, Samsung was he says is set to unveil its first AI smart glasses, developed by Gentle Monster, at the Galaxy Unpacked event in London this July. Another one Huawei, Alibaba, Xiaomi and the rest are walking again.

The numbers show the directions. The global shipment of AI glasses has increased to 8.7 million units in 2025, more than 300% from last year, and experts predict that this number will exceed 15 million this year. about Omdia.

Marketers and manufacturers of AI-powered smart glasses are also positioning themselves for what’s to come. One of the companies, the founders of South Korea was named LetinARhas spent the last decade building the light technology that would make all of this wearable.

The LG Electronics startup just raised $18.5 million from the Korea Development Bank and the South Korean investment arm, Lotte Ventures, among others, ahead of its 2027 IPO in South Korea.

His former investor, LG Electronicshas also begun developing its own AI smart glasses, according to a local media report, which is an indication of how South Korea’s largest electric power company is taking the sector.

CEO Jaehyeok Kim and CTO Jeonghun Ha, who have been friends since high school, founded LetinAR together in 2016.

A lens that makes it wearable

LetinAR does not make glasses. It activates the part that makes the glasses work. The optical module, the small part of the lens that creates images instead of seeing, is what determines whether smart glasses sound like a sci-fi theme or something you’d wear to work, Ha told TechCrunch. It needs to be light, thin, and energy-efficient, while providing a sharp, crisp image. Getting all of that into a single unit, small enough to fit inside a smart frame, is the biggest technical challenge for the entire industry. That’s what LetinAR is building.

“We see AI glasses as the next platform,” Kim said. “And the lens design part is the hardest part to get right because AI lens designers need a lens that’s smaller, lighter, and more powerful than what’s available today.”

The co-founders said LetineAR wants to be the company that the glasses manufacturers call. The company calls its technology PinTILT: a method of placing small light elements inside the lens so that the light is directed where it needs to go, to the user’s eyes, instead of being scattered in all directions.

Think about TV. It spreads light throughout the room, but only the light that reaches the eyes is important. Many smart technologies are available, especially the well-known method called waveguidework like that TV, splitting and spreading the light across the lens to create a larger image. The result is a thin, but functional lens. More light is wasted before it reaches the eyes, which means poorer images and, more importantly, a faster-draining battery, Ha explained.

Another method, the process of making glass which is known as bird bathit emits light into the eyes, but the shape is larger, making it impossible to fit inside what looks like normal glasses.

PinTILT will stop selling, Ha said. By focusing on the light that can enter the eye and carefully adjusting the angle of each small object inside the lens, LetinAR claims to be able to create a bright image in a smaller, lighter format, using less energy. In a category where every gram and every hour of battery life matters, that’s the problem that all companies have been trying to solve.

In the space, there are several friends like WaveOptics images, DigiLens images and Smooth.

Customers

Its modules are already being shipped. LetinAR counts Japan’s NTT QONOQ Devices and Dynabook, formerly known as Toshiba Client Solutions, among its clients, giving the company real experience in manufacturing at scale. It is in talks with Big Tech companies on R&D for next-generation AI glasses, although it declined to name them.

One of LetinAR’s most sought-after clients is Aegis Riderthe Swiss deeptech company emerged from ETH Zurich’s Computer Vision Lab. Aegis Rider is building an AR helmet powered by AI that displays direction, speed, and safety information directly in the motorcyclist’s field of vision, not floating on the visor, but attached to the road itself, as if the information is recorded on the world in front.

The LetinAR module is located inside the helmet. Aegis Rider is targeting the EU and Swiss markets in 2026.

The latest investment, which brings in a total of $41.7 million, will advance as the AI ​​glasses market transitions from early adopters to mass production, Kim said, adding that hardware devices, such as AI glasses, are the next step that will bring AI into everyday life.