AllFocal Optics, a startup developing a lens for augmented and virtual reality, is announcing a $5.3m round.
The raise, made up of $3.6m equity and $1.7m in grant funding, was led by SpeedInvest. 7PC Ventures, Another.VC, Martlet Capital and former professional footballer Mario Gotze also participated. Innovate UK provided the grant funding.
Ash Saulsbury, formerly head of Meta’s AR programme and previously VP of technology at Microsoft, has also joined the Cambridge-based startup as chair, and says that AllFocal’s technology is “revolutionary” for the industry.
The raise comes as the company gears up for the first trials of its tech, in a project with car maker Jaguar LandRover (JLR), beginning in early 2025.
Lenses that recreate human vision
While AR and VR headsets, like Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest, have generated immense hype and begun to emerge on shelves in recent years, the companies making them have faced challenges commercialising their tech to a mass market.
One of the obstacles preventing widespread adoption, according to AllFocal founder and CEO Pawan Shretha, is that many headsets on the market cause feelings of sickness for users.
This, he says, is down to many VR and AR products projecting virtual images at a fixed focal length, meaning a user’s eye has to constantly adjust when moving through a world of objects at different focal lengths.
“Your brain knows something is wrong, and this manifests as nausea and dizziness,” Shretha tells Sifted.
AllFocal is developing a type of lens which projects an image onto a user’s retina, meaning it’s always in focus. The lens is made up of a flat piece of glass, coated in substances that bend light in different ways.
Explaining why he’s joining the Cambridge startup, Saulsbury believes that AllFocal’s method of delivering this adaptive focus is a new way of solving one of VR and AR’s biggest issues.
“The industry has struggled with this challenge for decades, trying to find workable solutions with mechanically movable lens structures, or fluidics to change — AllFocal’s technology is truly magical and revolutionary, solving this challenge with no moving parts,” he says.
Commercialising VR tech
While this technology isn’t new, no one yet has been able to commercialise it. AllFocal thinks it could be the first.
There are two big hurdles to developing this kind of optical tech for the mass market, says Shretha.
One is that the lens needs to be perfectly aligned to the eyes — due to it projecting images directly onto the retina. While Shretha is coy about exactly how AllFocal has solved this, due to concerns about others copying the idea, he tells Sifted they’ve developed a way to project an image without needing near-perfect alignment.
The other is how heavy and bulky headsets need to be to include all of the optical technology. AllFocal has managed to miniaturise the tech and hopes to be able to slim down designs further in the near future.
“No one has got as close to solving the problem as AllFocal,” says Shretha.
Other startups developing similar technology include Finland’s Varjo, which has raised $132m since launching in 2016, according to Dealroom. There’s also Paris-based Lynx, which has picked up $2m and Distance Technologies, also from Finland, which has raised $13.8 across two rounds since being founded earlier this year.
Since launching in 2022, AllFocal has generated around £200k in revenue from several proof-of-concept projects with customers — although Shretha can’t say who.
The pilot project with JLR will see the company conduct studies alongside the carmaker on how its AR tech can work to project images on windscreens while driving.
What’s next
Shretha thinks AllFocal can take its first product to market within the next two years. It’s too early to say which sector that will be in yet, he adds, but tells Sifted the tech could be applied to the gaming, healthcare, defence, automotive and aerospace industries.
The company will double its headcount of 10 in the next 12 months as it moves towards developing a market-ready product.
While the fresh funding will take AllFocal to the point of developing that product, scaling up production to actually release it more widely will take more cash, says Shretha.
He tells Sifted that AllFocal will need around £10-15m more to scale manufacturing, which it will look to raise in the next two years.
The startup’s fate will depend on the wider success of the VR and AR market, and there are still questions about whether wearing a headset to consume media or work will ever really catch on among businesses and consumers. That’s still a big unknown, but with its new chair, AllFocal has certainly strengthened its chances of helping to make that happen.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/allfocal-raise-meta-news/
