LetinAR PinTILT – South Korean startup LetinAR is shipping the optical modules behind AI smart glasses and says its PinTILT technology is built to be thinner, lighter and more power-efficient—aiming for European road use as early as this year. The company has raised $18.5 milli
When you’re riding a motorcycle at 160 kilometers per hour, an arrow appears floating on the road ahead, telling you exactly where to turn. There’s no phone, no dashboard—just a helmet and a lens about the size of a thumbnail.
LetinAR’s optics are meant to make that kind of experience possible in real-world smart glasses.. The South Korean company says its technology is already heading toward European roads as early as this year. offering a glimpse of where the industry’s next wave of AI glasses is trying to land: not on a screen. but on your face.
The push is happening everywhere at once.. Meta has been selling AI-enabled Ray-Ban glasses since 2023. Google is building Android XR. and Apple is expected to enter the market.. Samsung. meanwhile. was reportedly set to unveil its first AI-capable smart glasses. co-designed with Gentle Monster. at a Galaxy Unpacked event in London this July.. In China, Huawei, Alibaba, Xiaomi and others are moving as well.
The momentum comes with numbers. Global AI glasses shipments surged to 8.7 million units in 2025, up more than 300% from the prior year, and analysts project that figure will cross 15 million this year, per Omdia.
Against that backdrop. LetinAR isn’t building the glasses themselves—it builds the part that determines whether they can be worn comfortably at all.. The startup. backed by LG Electronics. just secured $18.5 million from the Korea Development Bank and Lotte Ventures. among others. ahead of its planned 2027 IPO in South Korea.. Its previous investor. LG Electronics. has since begun developing its own AI smart glasses. a sign of how seriously South Korea’s largest consumer electronics company is treating the category.
Founded in 2016 by CEO Jaehyeok Kim and CTO Jeonghun Ha—who have been friends since high school—LetinAR’s pitch centers on what happens inside the lens.. Ha told TechCrunch that the optical module projects images into a user’s field of vision. and that it has to be light. thin. and power-efficient while still delivering a sharp. clear image.. “Getting all of that right in a single component. ” he said. “small enough to fit inside a normal-looking frame. is the central engineering challenge of the entire industry.”
Kim described AI glasses as “that next platform,” saying that “the optical module is the hardest part to get right as AI glasses makers will need a lens that is thinner, lighter, and more power-efficient than what exists today.”
The company calls its technology PinTILT: a way of arranging tiny optical elements inside a lens so light is directed precisely into the user’s eye instead of scattered in every direction.. LetinAR compares the problem to a TV that broadcasts light across an entire room. while only the light reaching your eyes matters.
Most existing smart lens technologies. particularly waveguide. work like that TV—splitting and spreading light across the full lens to create a wide image.. Ha explained that the result is a thin lens but an inefficient one. with a lot of light thrown away before it reaches the eye.. That inefficiency, he said, leads to dimmer images and a battery that drains fast.
An alternative approach called birdbath sends light more directly to the eye, but Ha said its structure is bulky, making it nearly impossible to fit inside something that looks like a normal pair of glasses.
LetinAR says PinTILT avoids the tradeoff.. Ha said it focuses on the light that can enter the eye and engineers the angle of each tiny element inside the lens. claiming it can produce a brighter image in a thinner. lighter form factor while using less power.. In a category where “every gram and every hour of battery life matters. ” Ha said that is the problem the entire industry has been trying to solve.
The module picture isn’t theoretical.. LetinAR says its modules are already shipping. counting Japan’s NTT QONOQ Devices and Dynabook. formerly known as Toshiba Client Solutions. among its customers. giving the company manufacturing experience at scale.. It is also in talks with Big Tech companies on R&D of next-generation AI glasses. though it declined to name them.
One of LetinAR’s most demanding customers is Aegis Rider. a Swiss deeptech company spun out of ETH Zurich’s Computer Vision Lab.. Aegis Rider is building an AI-powered AR helmet that displays navigation. speed. and safety alerts directly in a motorcycle rider’s field of vision—anchored to the road itself rather than floating on the visor. “as if the information is physically painted on the world ahead.” LetinAR says its module is inside the helmet. and that Aegis Rider is targeting the EU and Swiss markets in 2026.
That sequence—funding to scale. optics that claim to cut power waste. and modules already shipped to customers—tracks the industry’s wider timing: shipments rising sharply in 2025. projected to pass 15 million this year. while major device makers prepare AI smart glasses launches and LetinAR positions its hardware as the part everyone needs to wear.
LetinAR said the latest funding brings its total raised to $41.7 million.. Kim said the new money will go toward scale-up as the AI glasses market shifts from early adopters to mass production.. He added that hardware devices, such as AI glasses, are the next layer that will bring AI into everyday life.
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