Chinese startup Even Realities reached a $1 billion valuation after raising $150 million in a pre-Series B round led by Meituan and Tencent, as TechCrunch reported on July 6, 2026. Founded by former Apple engineers, the company has carved out a distinct market position with a single differentiating bet: smart glasses with no camera.
Even Realities was founded in 2023 in Shenzhen by Will Wang, who worked on the Apple Watch and iPhone from 2016 to 2018, alongside designers from luxury eyewear house Lindberg, according to CNBC. Its smart glasses, the G1 and G2 models, dispense with the camera entirely and project information through a display integrated into the lenses, known as a heads-up display. That privacy-first posture stands in direct contrast to Meta's strategy: analytics firm IDC places Meta at 70 percent of the global market with its camera-equipped Ray-Ban glasses. Worldwide smart glasses shipments reached 2.25 million units in Q1 2026, a year-over-year increase of 167 percent, per the same firm.
The latest model, the Even G2, launched in November 2025 at a base price of $599 and is controlled via a smart ring called the Even R1. With prescription lenses added, the average ticket runs around $1,000. The company claims to have been the first in its category to sell more than 10,000 pairs and says it is already profitable, with more than half of its users in the United States and 80 percent of its developer community based there. Previous investors CDH Investment, Monolith Management, and Sequoia China also participated in the round. IDC projects the global smart glasses market will surpass 50 million units by 2030.
The race for smart glasses is intensifying in a year when Snap unveiled its first augmented reality glasses and Rokid, another Chinese competitor, reached a valuation of 2,580 million dollars. For Latin American consumers, the question is no longer whether AI wearables will reach the region, but in what format they will arrive first.
This article was written with AI assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.