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September 4, 2020
3 minutes read

Nreal Raises $40 Million

Photo credit: Nreal Nreal, a Chinese augmented reality headset maker and Magic Leap rival, has said it’s raised $40 million in a…

Photo credit: Nreal

Nreal, a Chinese augmented reality headset maker and Magic Leap rival, has said it’s raised $40 million in a new funding round led by Kuaishou, a Chinese video streaming upstart, and with participation from investors including Sequoia China, Hillhouse Capital, and CICC Capital. With the new funding, Nreal, which was founded in 2017, has now raised a total of $70 million to date.

Nreal makes augmented reality headsets similar to that of Magic Leap, the heavily-funded US-based maker of augmented reality headsets. It shouldn’t be a surprise given Nreal’s founder, Xu Chi, was a former engineer at Magic Leap. It’s such that even Magic Leap dragged Xu to the courts over allegations of intellectual property theft, but Nreal, however, later prevailed, with a U.S. judge dropping the case against the company. Magic Leap itself has seen tough times, with the company laying off half of its workforce earlier this year and recently recruiting a new CEO to help stabilize the company.

Nreal sells its augmented reality headsets directly to consumers and is one of the few startups still doing so. Magic Leap originally sold to consumers but switched to focus on enterprise customers after relatively poor sales.

Nreal unveiled its first augmented reality headset last year but began shipping widely to consumers in this year.