On March 6, it was reported that Thunderbird Innovation, a new AR enterprise, announced the completion of the first round of financing. This round of financing was led by Fosun Fortune, Rongyi Investment, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, Runxing Ruihua, Doctor's Glasses Strategic Investment, Wild Grass Venture Capital and Hainan Yingtian, with a total amount of more than 100 million yuan. It is one of the enterprises with the largest first round of financing in the AR industry. This round of financing will be used to promote the technology research and development, mass production, market expansion and talent introduction of consumer grade AR glasses with BirdBath and optical waveguide technology lines, and promote the landing and market popularization of consumer grade AR glasses. It is reported that a new round of financing for Thunderbird Innovation will be launched in the near future.
Thunderbird Innovation, founded at the end of 2021 and incubated by TCL Electronics (01070. HK), is a cutting-edge enterprise focusing on the AR field. The company's core team comes from Tencent, Dajiang Meta、OPPO、 IQIYI, as well as various cutting-edge start-ups, has a profound accumulation in the fields of near eye display optical design, self-developed AI algorithm model, multi-mode human-computer interaction, and has a high level in the supply chain and production process. In the field of AR core optics, Thunderbird has invested a lot of R&D resources and manpower in innovation, has core technology patents, and has the ability to self research, produce and deliver efficient complete machines of key optical components MicroLED full-color light engine.
From the perspective of product route, Thunderbird Innovation has the ability of productization in the AR glasses field of Birdbath and optical waveguide route, and is an AR brand with complete industrial technology layout. Last year, Thunderbird innovatively mass produced Thunderbird Air and Thunderbird Air 1S, two consumer XR products based on Birdbath's scheme, and achieved product, technology and market leadership. According to iResearch, Thunderbird innovation will occupy 28.4% of the domestic consumer grade AR glasses online market in 2022, ranking first in the industry. At the beginning of this year, Thunderbird Innovation released the consumer grade real AR glasses Thunderbird X2 based on the optical waveguide route at CES, breaking through the industry's technical bottlenecks, innovating AR application scenarios, making breakthrough progress in key technologies such as MicroLED full-color display, self-developed optical engine precision and miniaturization, and solving the mass production problem of full-color optical engine. According to official news, Thunderbird X2 will be officially launched in H1 2023, when Thunderbird's innovative developer plan will be launched simultaneously.
Figure: Sales of major online platforms of domestic consumer grade AR glasses of iResearch in 2022
As the fastest growing brand in the field of consumer grade AR glasses, Thunderbird Innovation has strong strength in optics, display, algorithm, and machine R&D, laying a solid foundation for high-performance hardware R&D, and the continuous enrichment and expansion of ecological applications have further strengthened the connection with consumers, so as to achieve industry leadership in the consumer grade AR market. Thunderbird's innovative market performance, products and technical strength have also been recognized by investors.
Zhu Liping, partner of Fosun Fortune, said: "On the track of AR, Thunderbird Innovation has made great achievements in BirdBath products by virtue of its comprehensive capabilities in R&D, mass production and sales. At the same time, it has taken the lead in releasing dual vision full-color MicroLED+optical waveguide products, showing extraordinary potential. We expect that Thunderbird innovation can be innovatively combined with Fosun's great happiness plate and more industrial scenes in the future to bring consumers a new experience. "
Liu Hongchun, the founding partner of Rongyi Investment, said: "Relying on TCL's years of deep accumulation in AR optical technology, display devices, intelligent algorithms and other fields, the Thunderbird innovation team has continued to launch internationally leading AR glasses, which has been widely recognized by customers at home and abroad. We believe that Thunderbird team can continue to promote the industrialization of AR glasses and become the main supplier of global mass consumption AR glasses. "
It is worth mentioning that in this round of financing, Dr. Glasses also participated in Thunderbird innovation. Previously, Thunderbird Innovation and Doctoral Glasses reached a strategic cooperation and established a joint laboratory to cooperate in improving the wearing experience of smart glasses and enabling offline channels.
Li Hongwei, the founder and CEO of Thunderbird Innovation, said, "AR can bring imagination into reality, make space more intelligent, and build a real broad sense of the Internet, bringing a new revolution to people's production and life. The underlying issue that determines the development of the AR industry, 'AR core technology', is developing continuously and rapidly, and the industry is about to usher in a breakthrough. Thunderbird Innovation is committed to creating a top consumer level AR ecosystem and creating more value for global users. "
Market research institutions generally believe that the AR industry will maintain an increase of more than 50% in the next few years, which is a track with great potential. IDC predicts that the 5-year CAGR of the AR market will reach 70.3%. The Prospective Industry Research Institute predicts that the compound growth rate of China's AR industry market will reach about 78% from 2022 to 2027. China Merchants Securities predicts that the global AR/VR industry space will reach nearly 2 trillion yuan by 2025.
Follow our Weibo @ Love Computer
Follow our WeChat official account: playphone
Of course, we also pay attention to our Bilibili account: love computer
