Gixel comes out of stealth with a new type of AR optical engine - The Ghost Howls

Learn about Gixel, a startup developing a groundbreaking optical engine for smartglasses, along with their latest funding round.

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TL;DR

German startup Gixel just emerged from stealth with a fresh take on AR optics that swaps waveguides for liquid‐filled lenses studded with tiny, opto-electrically steered micromirrors. Paired with a micro-OLED projector and eye-tracking, those mirrors dynamically bounce virtual pixels into your eyes while staying crystal-clear when you’re just looking at the real world. They’ve snagged €5 million from big names like Brendan Iribe and Ted Schilowitz to refine the tech and prep for a larger Series A next year.

Gixel claims this design delivers smartphone-level visuals, super transparency, low power draw, variable focal planes and a scalable field of view—all in a sleek, curved package. The big hurdles? Seamlessly merging countless mirror reflections into one cohesive image, keeping the mirrors fast, reliable and durable with zero latency, and figuring out mass manufacturing and repair in case a mirror goes rogue. Early single-mirror demos at AWE impressed with bright, crisp virtual flowers, so here’s hoping they nail the tricky stuff at scale.