South Korea's LetinAR crafts optics powering AI glasses

Picture yourself on a motorcycle traveling at 160 km/h when an arrow materializes on the road ahead, guiding your next turn. No phone, no dashboard—just your helmet and a thumbnail-sized lens.

This isn't a concept video. It's hitting European roads as early as this year—and it offers an early preview of the trajectory for smart glasses.

In recent years, major tech companies have been making strategic moves—both subtle and overt. Meta has been selling AI-powered Ray-Ban glasses since 2023, Google is developing Android XR, and Apple is anticipated to join the race. Last week, reports emerged that Samsung plans to debut its first AI-capable smart glasses, co-designed with Gentle Monster, at a Galaxy Unpacked event in London this July. Chinese players like Huawei, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and others are also advancing.

The data underscores the momentum. Global shipments of AI glasses jumped to 8.7 million units in 2025—a more than 300% increase year-over-year—and Omdia analysts project the number will exceed 15 million this year.

Suppliers and component manufacturers for AI-powered smart glasses are also preparing for the next phase. One such company, South Korean startup LetinAR, has spent the past decade developing optical technology that could make these devices truly wearable.

The startup, backed by LG Electronics, has just raised $18.5 million from Korea Development Bank and Lotte Ventures (the venture arm of the South Korean retail giant), among others, ahead of its planned 2027 IPO in South Korea.

According to a local media report, LG Electronics—a prior investor—has since started developing its own AI smart glasses, signaling how seriously South Korea's largest consumer electronics company views this category.

CEO Jaehyeok Kim and CTO Jeonghun Ha, high school friends, co-founded LetinAR in 2016.

Image Credits: LetinAR /

The Lens That Makes Smart Glasses Wearable

LetinAR doesn't manufacture the entire glasses—it produces the critical component that makes them functional. The optical module, a tiny lens that projects images into the user's field of vision, determines whether a pair of smart glasses feels like a sci-fi gadget or something you'd actually wear to work, Ha told TechCrunch. It must be lightweight, thin, and power-efficient while delivering a sharp, clear image. Engineering all of that into a single component small enough to fit inside a normal-looking frame is the central challenge of the entire industry—and that's precisely what LetinAR is building.

Kim said, "We view AI glasses as the next platform. The optical module is the most difficult component to perfect because AI glasses makers need a lens that is thinner, lighter, and more power-efficient than anything currently available."

The co-founders said LetinAR aims to be the company that these glasses manufacturers turn to. Their technology, called PinTILT, arranges tiny optical elements inside a lens so that light is directed precisely into the user's eye rather than scattering in every direction.

Think of a TV: it broadcasts light across the entire room, but only the light that reaches your eyes matters. Most existing smart lens technologies—especially the dominant waveguide approach—work similarly, splitting and spreading light across the full lens to create a wide image. The result is a thin lens, but an inefficient one. Much of the light is wasted before it reaches the eye, leading to dimmer images and, critically, faster battery drain, Ha explained.

The alternative mirror-based approach, known as birdbath, delivers light more directly to the eye but results in a bulky structure that is nearly impossible to fit inside a normal-looking pair of glasses.

PinTILT avoids that tradeoff, Ha said. By focusing only on the light that can actually enter the eye and precisely engineering the angle of each tiny element inside the lens, LetinAR claims to produce a brighter image in a thinner, lighter form factor while consuming less power. In a category where every gram and every hour of battery life counts, this is the problem the entire industry has been trying to solve.

In this space, competitors include WaveOptics, DigiLens, and Lumus.

Customers

LetinAR's modules are already in production. Its customers include Japan's NTT QONOQ Devices and Dynabook (formerly Toshiba Client Solutions), providing the company with real-world manufacturing experience at scale. The startup is also in discussions with major tech companies regarding R&D for next-generation AI glasses, though it declined to name them.

One of LetinAR's most demanding clients is Aegis Rider, a Swiss deep-tech company spun out of ETH Zurich's Computer Vision Lab. Aegis Rider is developing an AI-powered AR helmet that projects navigation, speed, and safety alerts directly into a motorcyclist's field of view—not as overlays on the visor, but anchored to the road ahead, as if the information were physically painted onto the world.

LetinAR's module is integrated into the helmet. Aegis Rider plans to target the EU and Swiss markets in 2026.

This latest funding brings the total raised to $41.7 million and will be used for scaling up as the AI glasses market transitions from early adopters to mass production, Kim said. He added that hardware devices like AI glasses represent the next layer that will integrate AI into everyday life.