On July 6, 2026, TechCrunch reported that Even Realities, a smart glasses startup headquartered in Shenzhen, has closed a $150 million round at a $1 billion valuation. Meituan and Tencent led the financing — Tencent is a returning backer — with earlier investors including HSG, formerly known as Sequoia China. The round is technically a pre-Series B, and the company raised it from a position of strength: its glasses are profitable, with average orders approaching $1,000.
Founded in 2023 by former Apple engineers, Even Realities builds smart glasses without a camera: a heads-up display sits inside the frames, controlled by taps and swipes on the Even R1 companion smart ring. With Meta and Snap both shipping new smart glasses in June 2026, this Chinese team squeezed into the global unicorn ranks by taking the opposite route from the giants.
A $150M Round Led by Meituan and Tencent
The round totals $150 million at a $1 billion valuation, with Meituan and Tencent as leads. For the two Chinese internet giants, the strategic logic goes beyond financial return: smart glasses are widely seen as the next personal computing interface after the phone, and Even Realities has proven it can manufacture optical-display glasses, sell them at premium prices, and still turn a profit.
The growth signals are unmistakable. Headcount has grown from 30–40 people in 2024 to 300–400 today, and the new capital is ammunition for the next stage of scaling rather than a lifeline. The glasses are sold in the United States, Japan, South Korea, the Middle East, and Europe, with more than half of users in the fast-growing U.S. market — where most of the developer community sits as well.
The No-Camera Design Philosophy
The company’s core position is blunt: glasses should not be a camera strapped to your face. From the Even G1 in 2024 to the flagship Even G2 launched in November 2025, the product line has stayed camera-free, which turns privacy from a liability into a selling point. Voice features such as live translation transcribe audio to text rather than storing recordings; user data is encrypted, and the infrastructure meets European privacy standards.
The choice reads as especially persuasive in 2026. As Meta, Snap, and most rivals race to pack cameras into frames, public discomfort about being recorded keeps rising. Even Realities inverts the arrangement: the glasses are a display and assistant for the wearer — information flows to the user, not from surrounding people into a lens.
Optics Is the Core Technology
CEO Will Wang, who previously worked on the Apple Watch and iPhone, says most of the investment has gone into optics: “With a phone or a watch, the display is just a conventional OLED or LCD screen.” Glasses, he argues, are the first consumer category that truly depends on optical displays. The company’s proprietary Even HAO (Holistic Adaptive Optics) integrates the microchip, the waveguide, and prescription-lens support from the ground up; the G1 was, at launch, the lightest waveguide smart glasses on the market.
The software stack orbits everyday-assistant scenarios. Conversate analyzes conversations in real time, explains jargon, suggests follow-up talking points, and syncs summaries to the phone. Translation, transcription, and teleprompt features ship through the Even Hub marketplace, which is open to developers. Beyond the glasses, the Even R1 ring serves as both controller and wellbeing tracker, forming a minimal interaction pair — ring for input, glasses for output.
A Niche Market at Premium Prices — and Profitable
The sales numbers sketch a small but healthy business. The company blew past its 10,000-unit sales goal and claims to be the first in its category to cross 10,000 pairs sold — while staying profitable. Pricing sits at the premium end: frames start at $599 before tax, prescription lenses or the ring add another $200–300, and average orders land near $1,000.
The customer profile is equally sharp: mostly male professionals aged 30 to 50, about a third of them company executives. For them, meeting prompts, live translation, and message summaries are productivity tools, not toys. One irony stands out — Even Realities manufactures in China but does not sell there yet, with Wang explaining that “the demand there is significant, so we want to make sure we’re prepared first.” Squeezed between Meta and Snap, this Shenzhen company demonstrates an alternative playbook: skip the do-everything assistant, skip the camera, and make display-plus-privacy so good that people pay a thousand dollars for it.
Sources
AI-assisted summary compiled from the sources above, reviewed by a human before publishing.