News › OQmen­ted · $ 20 Mil­lion Series A finan­cing suc­cess – also wel­co­mes Sharp as a stra­te­gic investor

The com­pany adds a new board mem­ber and will use the Series A funds to estab­lish its leading
laser beam scan­ning (LBS) tech­no­logy as the key enabler for the first gene­ra­ti­ons con­su­mer Aug­men­ted Rea­lity glas­ses, long-awai­ted by the public and adver­ti­sed by the major tech­no­logy com­pa­nies.

OQmen­ted, a tech­no­logy lea­der in MEMS1-based AR/MR dis­play and 3D sens­ing solu­ti­ons, announ­ced today that it has rai­sed $ 20 mil­lion in its Series A fund­rai­sing round. In the new finan­cing round, Sharp2, one of the world’s lea­ding elec­tro­nic device and dis­play manu­fac­tu­r­ers, joi­ned as a stra­te­gic inves­tor in the com­pany. It included par­ti­ci­pa­tion of the exis­ting inves­tors Sal­via, Vsquared Ven­tures and others.

OQmen­ted enables tech com­pa­nies and eye­glass manu­fac­tu­r­ers to build sty­lish all-day weara­ble Aug­men­ted or Mixed Rea­lity glas­ses. To that end, the startup deve­lops ultra-com­pact MEMS-based light engi­nes, uti­li­zing laser beam scan­ning. This tech­no­logy offers seve­ral advan­ta­ges over com­pe­ti­tive approa­ches: lower power con­sump­tion, smal­ler size, hig­her bright­ness & con­trast and supe­rior dis­play per­for­mance. All of these are requi­re­ments for light­weight con­su­mer AR glas­ses, sui­ta­ble for out­door use. Tech­no­lo­gi­cal rese­arch and con­sul­ting firm Gart­ner fore­casts a boo­ming demand for so-cal­led head-moun­ted dis­plays by 2026, asso­cia­ted with an incre­asing adap­tion rate of MEMS mir­rors “to bene­fit from its lower cost, lower power con­sump­tion and smal­ler size”.
The stra­te­gic coope­ra­tion with Sharp sup­ports OQmented’s ambi­tion to become the key enabler for con­su­mer Aug­men­ted Rea­lity glas­ses. It lever­a­ges the syn­er­gies of com­bi­ning Sharp’s electronic
device and dis­play manu­fac­tu­ring exper­tise with OQmented’s uni­que IP and know-how in LBS-based micro-dis­plays. The coope­ra­tion con­so­li­da­tes OQmented’s stra­tegy to offer com­plete light engi­nes as
Plug and Play solu­ti­ons, ready for integration.

“Big tech com­pa­nies and other play­ers are racing to accom­plish con­su­mer AR glas­ses that are ulti­m­ately able to replace the smart­phone,” said Tho­mas von Wan­toch, co-CEO and co-foun­der of OQmen­ted. “There is over­whel­ming demand for our pro­duct and we will use the Series A funds to acce­le­rate get­ting our light engi­nes ready for the mar­ket. We are exci­ted that we gai­ned Sharp as stra­te­gic inves­tor with years of expe­ri­ence as one of the lar­gest sup­pli­ers for dis­plays and elec­tro­nic devices. Our uni­que coope­ra­tion bund­les enorm­ous know-how and enables us to offer an unmat­ched one-stop shop solu­tion to our cus­to­mers: a light engine with inte­gra­ted MEMS, elec­tro­nics and laser. This streng­thens our posi­tion as key enabler for the Aug­men­ted and Mixed Rea­lity market.”

David Wood­ward, Pre­si­dent of Sharp Devices Europe GmbH, comm­ents: “We look for­ward to acce­le­ra­ting our coope­ra­tion with OQmen­ted and to rea­li­zing the deve­lo­ping mar­ket of all-day weara­ble Aug­men­ted and Mixed Rea­lity glas­ses, along with the many dif­fe­ren­tia­ted mar­kets that will even­tually bene­fit from the key tech­no­lo­gies and inno­va­tions dri­ven by OQmen­ted. Tho­mas and Ulrich are lea­ding a fast moving startup com­pany with a gro­wing team of highly moti­va­ted dyna­mic staff, demons­t­ra­ting lea­ding edge inno­va­tion. We are very exci­ted to uti­lize the many syn­er­gies available bet­ween OQmen­ted and Sharp’s own tech­no­lo­gies and device industrialization.”

OQmen­ted was foun­ded in 2018 by Tho­mas von Wan­toch and Dr. Ulrich Hof­mann. The com­pany has grown to a team of around 80 peo­ple with five offices glo­bally and plans to expand in office and
labo­ra­tory space. Addi­tio­nally, OQmen­ted intends to hire seve­ral key employees and streng­then its busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment team for access to the US and Asian markets.

About OQmen­ted

OQmen­ted is a deep tech com­pany deve­lo­ping and sel­ling ultra-com­pact LBS dis­plays for Aug­men­ted and Mixed Rea­lity devices and best-in-class 3D sens­ing solu­ti­ons for mobile and stationary
appli­ca­ti­ons. The com­pany offers com­plete solu­ti­ons, inclu­ding in-house deve­lo­ped ASICs that are highly cus­to­mi­zed and opti­mi­zed to work with OQmen­ted MEMS mir­rors. The uni­que Lis­s­a­jous scan
pat­tern in com­bi­na­tion with the vacuum encap­su­la­tion tech­no­logy and pro­prie­tary elec­tro­nics, algo­rithms and soft­ware enables new pro­duct cate­go­ries in con­su­mer, auto­mo­tive and various other
indus­tries; the company’s exten­sive know-how and IP pro­vide for num­e­rous com­pe­ti­tive advan­ta­ges. With signi­fi­cant MEMS manu­fac­tu­ring expe­ri­ence, OQmen­ted effec­tively designs for high-volume
pro­duc­tion. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion can be found at www.oqmented.com.

For Press Infor­ma­tion Contact

Judith Woehl
Public Relations
OQmented
Email: moc.detnemqo@aidem