Shenzhen-based smart glasses startup Even Realities has raised $150 million in a pre-Series B round led by Tencent and Meituan, pushing its valuation to $1 billion, according to reporting by TechCrunch and SiliconANGLE that cited the company.
A camera-free bet
The round stands out because Even Realities builds a different kind of smart glasses than rivals such as Meta. Its flagship $599 Even G2 model has no camera at all. Instead, seven micro-LED projectors beam a heads-up display through a waveguide lens, and the device is controlled by a companion ring, the Even R1, rather than a lens-mounted sensor.
Founder and CEO Will Wang, a former Apple engineer who worked on the Apple Watch and iPhone, has framed that camera-free design as a privacy safeguard as competitors race to add cameras and always-on AI assistants to their frames. The company says its glasses meet European privacy standards and encrypt user data, and that onboard AI features — including a real-time conversation-translation copilot called Conversate — run without recording video of the wearer’s surroundings.
Growth and market position
Founded in 2023, Even Realities says its headcount has grown from roughly 30-40 employees to about 400, and that it was the first company in its product category to sell more than 10,000 units. More than half of its customers are in the US, with other markets including Japan, South Korea, the Middle East and Europe; it does not yet sell in China, despite its new investors’ roots there. The company says it is already profitable.
The funding lands as competition in smart glasses intensifies, with Meta, Google and Chinese manufacturers all pushing camera-equipped, AI-enabled frames. Even Realities said it will use the new capital to develop its next glasses platform, expand AI features and grow internationally.