Extended Reality Glasses Chips Maker GravityXR Secures New Funding, Investors include miHoYo
GravityXR, a chip development company specializing in extended reality (XR) glasses, has completed a pre-A+ round of financing worth hundreds of millions of yuan, LatePost reported on April 23rd. The funding was led by Tongge Fund and included participation from miHoYo, United Media FOFs, Eastern Bell Capital, Eight Roads, Vipassana Fund, and others. The company is now planning to launch its next round of financing.
In May of last year, GoerTek, a Chinese company specializing in acoustic, optical and microelectronics industries, launched the Tongge Fund. Other contributors to the fund include PICO, a VR head-mounted display manufacturer under ByteDance, miHoYo, a leading domestic game developer, and 37 Interactive Entertainment, which is currently the fourth-largest game publisher in China.
The founder of GravityXR worked for Apple’s XR team for 8 years. The other co-founders have backgrounds in chips, displays, optics, algorithms and more from companies such as Huawei, Meta, and Amazon. Currently employing around 200 people, the company plans to mass-produce its first-generation product by the end of 2024 with nearly 1 billion yuan in total funding.
Over the past decade, XR has seen both hype and decline. The main interaction form involves presenting content directly on glasses. These XR glasses can be worn in daily life and work, inspiring new applications that integrate physical environments with digital information such as e-commerce and social experiences. However, there are long-term bottlenecks for XR experience, production, and sales due to narrow viewing angles, unclear displays caused by optical technology limitations, dizziness issues, and low battery life.
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GravityXR is currently developing a co-processor chip specifically designed for XR devices. This chip optimizes display and perception sensors, and provides real-time image rendering, sensor data processing, and mixed-reality interaction functions. In the future, GravityXR plans to bundle its chips with various platforms and products to offer multiple payment models instead of selling them directly to manufacturers.