Smart Glasses Maker Qidi Secures 100M Yuan in Angel-Round Funds
Qidi, a smart glasses manufacturer, announced on September 13 that it has completed an angel round of financing totaling 100 million yuan ($14.4 million), with investment from Joy Capital, Matrix Partners and Meridian Capital. The funds will be used to develop and explore the company’s first smart glasses product, which will be released in the first half of next year.
In recent years, the foundation of digital industries such as 5G, artificial intelligence and big data has developed rapidly, and the underlying technologies for smart glasses – such as displays, interaction, algorithms and computing power – have also gradually matured.
Qidi was founded in Shanghai in December of 2021. The founder is the first chief scientist and the first chief architect of Huawei’s mobile phone, and one of the core founders of Huawei’s P and Mate flagship phones. After that, the founder served as the general manager of Xiaomi‘s mobile phone brand, and as co-founder and CTO of Black Shark. Other members of the founding team come from Huawei, drone giant DJI and other companies, with successful experience in hardware, software, algorithms and other fields.
The founder of Qidi told 36Kr that the underlying technology for smart glasses will gradually mature in the next two to three years, after which the consumer market will rapidly grow in volume. Unlike other products close to the metaverse concept, the most unique feature of smart glasses produced by Qidi is that they are used to perceive the environment and recognize everything from the first perspective. This can free hands through instant feedback information, so as to better improve people’s life and production efficiency.
The ideal smart glasses need to be worn for a long time, presenting tests such as weight, comfort, battery life and heat dissipation. At the same time, as an item intended to be worn daily, smart glasses have both technological and fashion attributes, putting forward higher requirements for appearance design, quality, aesthetics, and personalization.
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Therefore, the Qidi team’s product solution is intelligent glasses. On one hand, the company will develop innovative products in terms of weight, battery life and wearing experience. On the other hand, compared with mobile phones, smart glasses combine consumer electronics and accessories, which have higher requirements for design sense, including diopter adjustmentand appearance. These are also some areas that Qidi focuses on.
