San Francisco-based Osterhout Design Group (ODG) said it closed a large $58 million Series A funding round, and will use the money to “accelerate its existing production capabilities” and “complete its new products” to be introduced at CES in January.
Shenzhen O-film Tech Co., Ltd., Vanfund Urban Investment & Development Co. Ltd., 21st Century Fox and individual investors participated in the round. With the money ODG also plans to grow its patent portfolio and hire worldwide, growing the ranks of its 80 employees.
“For eight years, we’ve taken a very systematic approach to designing and refining our smartglasses for specific applications from the US government, industry and enterprise customers in a wide variety of markets, and that will not change,” said Ralph Osterhout, CEO of ODG, in a prepared statement. “We carefully picked investment partners who not only share ODG’s product vision and growth strategy, but also have the reputation and reach to expand ODG’s global presence and market recognition.”
ODG makes augmented glassess with see-through displays that resemble sunglasses, which could have big potential for uses like manufacturing and construction where you can access checklists or instructions without removing your hands from the work. AR and mixed reality glasses also let you talk to remote experts who can guide you through specific work on site, a use case that has potential to help workers from the space station to the bottom of the ocean.
With the Spectacles camera sunglasses from Snap finding popularity at a low price, existing companies and businesses working in similar areas may be getting a boost now that the technology appears to be maturing. ODG was originally founded in 1999 as a tech incubator, but is now focused on head-mounted displays for government and enterprise.
With CES 2017 in January clearly shaping up to be a big event for ODG, we can’t wait to see what they have to show as the company aims to cover the consumer market as well.
