Social media app developer Kuaishou led a $40m series B1 round for China-based mixed reality glasses developer nReal on Friday.
The round included CCEIF Fund, a joint venture between telecommunications equipment producer China Electronics Corporation and investment bank China International Capital Corporation, as well as Sequoia Capital China, GP Capital and Hillhouse Capital.
Founded in 2017, nReal has created lightweight mixed reality glasses that make use of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors, in addition to a development kit for virtual and augmented reality applications.
Telecoms firms KDDI and LG Uplus have partnership agreements in place with nReal, which intends to use the proceeds from the round to increase adoption of its technology for ‘the 5G era’.
The company recently won a court case against rival Magic Leap, which alleged nReal founder and CEO Chi Xu – a former Magic Leap employee – had stolen trade secrets.
The latest round comes after nReal secured $16m from online video streaming platform iQiyi, China Everbright Group’s New Economy Fund, Shunwei Capital and China Growth Capital in February 2019.
The company had raised a total of $15m as of the previous month, when it received an undisclosed amount of series A funding from iQiyi, industrial robot manufacturer Siasun, fellow existing backers Shunwei Capital and APlus, and new investor China Growth Capital.
Image courtesy of Hangzhou Tairuo Technology Co., Ltd.
