Swave, the startup building true holographic smart glasses, bags €27M

In the 1977 Star Wars film New hope there’s an iconic scene where beloved droid R2-D2 emits a beam of light to create a hologram of Princess Leia. I pray for help from Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Unfortunately, almost 50 years later, we are not much closer to the real holograms that science fiction promised us, not to mention teleportation devices and flying cars.

Yes we have AR and virtual reality headsets such as HoloLens from Microsoft or Apple. Vision Probut they simply use transparent screens to create a hologram effect. Even Tupac’s famous live performance at Coachella, 16 years after his death, was staged using a game of light called Pepper’s Ghost. No guys, this is not a real hologram.

Real holograms refract light to create three-dimensional images that float in the air and are visible from all angles, much like how Princess Leia was portrayed years ago. Holography is a growing field, and there are several companies planning to commercialize this technology. One of them is Sveve.

In 2022, Swave spun out of Belgium’s Imec, one of the world’s leading nanoelectronics research centers. The company claims its Holographic Extended Reality (HXR) display technology is the first to achieve true holography by converting light waves into 3D. life-likeimages.

Swave recently secured €27 million in a funding round led by Belgian wealth fund SFPIM and imec.xpand, the technology-focused venture capital subsidiary of Imec. The new capital follows a €10 million seed round in 2023, bringing the startup’s total raised to €37 million.

“This round will accelerate the adoption of Swave products as we continue to address the challenges of today’s AR experiences with true holography,” said Mike Noonen, CEO of Swave.

Swave’s first product will be a pair of lightweight smart glasses that could blow the current state of the art out of the water. The glasses feature a special display that uses phase change materials to control light and create 3D images that you can see from all angles.

The company claims to have developed the world’s smallest pixels (less than 300 nm), which help create clear, high-quality images without straining your eyes. The founders’ ultimate goal is to create applications that can pass the visual Turing test, in which virtual reality is indistinguishable from images of the real world.

The glasses use a spatial color system to create full-color glasses. Instead of using multiple panels or quickly switching, color filters are arranged in a pattern on a single display panel. According to Swave, this system reduces visual artifacts and increases battery life, making the glasses more efficient.

The company believes the smart glasses, which are still being tested, will provide better depth of field and a wider field of view than similar headsets, but will also be much smaller and lighter.

Swave glasses can also solve some common AR and VR problems. Users could customize holograms to suit their vision—without the need for bulky equipment. They will also be able to dynamically switch focus and change the distance to digital objects, which will reduce side effects such as nausea, eye strain and headaches.

With the new funding, Swave now has its sights set on launching the product.

“With Series A funding secured and semiconductor components running at our partner fabs, we are on track to launch product development kits and soon to production devices,” said Dmitry Chutov, co-founder and COO of Swave.

Swave is also working on head-up displays (HUDs) for vehicles, as well as something called a spatial light modulator. This device will create holograms without the need for glasses at all. This is something that might come close to the magic of R2-D2 – or perhaps even better.