Key Points
- Even Realities raised $150 million in a pre-Series B round, reaching a $1 billion valuation.
- Meituan led the round; existing backer Tencent and HSG (formerly Sequoia China) also joined.
- The ex-Apple team's flagship G2 glasses are camera-free, projecting a display into the wearer's sightline.
- Even is the first in its category to sell more than 10,000 units, at a $599 starting price.
Even Realities, a three-year-old smart-glasses startup founded by former Apple engineers, has raised $150 million in a pre-Series B round that values the company at $1 billion — its first step into the unicorn club and a bet that the winning smart glasses will be the ones that leave the camera off.
The round was led by Chinese tech giant Meituan, with participation from existing investor Tencent and HSG, the firm formerly known as Sequoia China. Even Realities is headquartered in Shenzhen and was started in 2023 by a team that includes CEO Will Wang, who worked on the Apple Watch and iPhone. The company has grown from roughly 30 to 40 employees in 2024 to between 300 and 400 today, and says the capital will fund its next-generation platform, deeper AI integration, and a global expansion already spanning the U.S., Japan, South Korea, the Middle East, and Europe.
The product is the argument. Even's flagship G2 glasses, which launched in November alongside a companion R1 ring, carry no camera and no recording hardware. Instead of capturing the world, they beam information — notifications, turn-by-turn navigation, and live translation — straight into the wearer's line of sight through a heads-up display embedded in the lenses. As CNBC framed it, that is a deliberate counter-position to Meta's camera-equipped Ray-Bans, and Even says it is the first company in the category to sell more than 10,000 units. The G2 starts at $599, though the average order lands closer to $1,000 once accessories are added.
The read: Even is wagering that the smart-glasses market cracks open on privacy, not content capture. Meta has spent two years defining the category around a camera on your face — a design that keeps generating headlines and unease in equal measure even as it drives volume with its $299 line. Even's camera-free G2 is the clearest sign yet that there is a second thesis with real money behind it: that plenty of people want the display without the lens pointed at everyone else. That the check came from Meituan and Tencent, not a Western consumer fund, also underlines how much of the next hardware wave is being financed and manufactured out of Shenzhen — the same supply-chain gravity that now shapes everything from EVs to the AI compute stack.
Source: TechCrunch, CNBC.
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