South Korea’s LetinAR is building optics behind AI glasses

Source: TechCrunch

Who’s Betting on the Future?

Market Momentum

• 2025 shipments: 8.7 million units (↑ 300 % YoY)
• 2026 forecast: > 15 million units (Omdia)

Spotlight: LetinAR

LetinAR – a South‑Korean startup backed by LG Electronics – has spent a decade perfecting the optical technology that could make AI‑powered glasses truly wearable.

• Funding: $18.5 M from Korea Development Bank, Lotte Ventures, and others
• Future plans: IPO in South Korea (target 2027)
• Parent involvement: LG Electronics is now developing its own AI smart glasses (local media report)

Founders Jaehyeok Kim (CEO) and Jeonghun Ha (CTO) have been friends since high school and launched the company in 2016.

Image credit: LetinAR

The Lens That Makes It Wearable

LetinAR doesn’t make the glasses themselves; it builds the optical module—the tiny lens that projects images into your field of vision. As Ha told TechCrunch, this component determines whether a pair of smart glasses feels like a sci‑fi headset or something you could actually wear to work.

The module must be light, thin, and power‑efficient while still delivering a sharp, clear image. Packing all of those requirements into a single component that fits inside a normal‑looking frame is the central engineering challenge of the entire industry. That’s exactly what LetinAR is tackling.

“We see AI glasses as the next platform,” says co‑founder Kim. “The optical module is the hardest part to get right, because AI‑glasses makers will need a lens that is thinner, lighter, and more power‑efficient than what exists today.”

PinTILT™ – LetinAR’s Proprietary Approach

LetinAR calls its technology PinTILT. It arranges tiny optical elements inside a lens so that light is directed precisely where it needs to go—into the user’s eye—rather than being scattered in every direction.

• TV analogy – A traditional TV broadcasts light across an entire room; only the light that reaches your eyes matters.
• Waveguide (common) approach – Works like that TV, splitting and spreading light across the full lens to create a wide image. The result is a thin lens, but it is inefficient: much light is lost, leading to dimmer images and faster battery drain.
• Birdbath (mirror‑based) approach – Delivers light more directly to the eye, but the bulkier structure makes it difficult to fit inside a normal‑looking pair of glasses.

PinTILT sidesteps this trade‑off by focusing only on the light that can actually enter the eye and carefully engineering the angle of each tiny element. The claimed benefits are:

• Brighter images
• Thinner, lighter form factor
• Lower power consumption

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.

Industry Peers

• WaveOptics – Waveguide‑based AR displays.
• DigiLens – Holographic waveguide technology.
• Lumus – Proprietary waveguide and display solutions.

LetinAR’s PinTILT aims to deliver the “thin‑and‑bright” optical module that could finally make AI‑glasses a practical, everyday device.

Customers

LetinAR’s modules are already shipping. The company counts Japan’s NTT QONOQ Devices and Dynabook (formerly Toshiba Client Solutions) among its customers, giving it real manufacturing experience at scale. It is also in talks with several Big‑Tech firms on R&D for next‑generation AI glasses (the partners remain unnamed).

Aegis Rider

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 rider’s field of vision.
• Anchors the information to the road itself—​as if the data were physically painted on the world ahead—​rather than floating on the visor.

LetinAR’s module is integrated inside the helmet, and Aegis Rider is targeting the EU and Swiss markets in 2026.

Funding & Growth

The latest financing round brings LetinAR’s total capital raised to $41.7 million. According to Kim, the funds will be used to scale production as the AI‑glasses market shifts from early adopters to mass‑production. He added that hardware devices such as AI glasses represent the next layer that will bring AI into everyday life.

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