NIO Capital leads Series C funding of Chinese AR tech firm Nreal

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chinese augmented reality (AR) technology company Nreal announced on Sept. 23 it nabbed over $100 million in the Series C financing, which was co-led by NIO's investment arm NIO Capital, Yunfeng Capital, and Hongtai Aplus.

Photo credit: Nreal

The newly-closed funding round also attracted CPE Yuanfeng and several strategic investors. Existing investors including GP Capital, GL Ventures, and Sequoia Capital China still took part in this round.

According to a post on Nreal's WeChat account, the new financing increased the capital Nreal raised over the past year to $150 million. The backers included Kuaishou, CCIG, Sequoia Capital China, GP Capital, GL Ventures, ShunWei Capital, China Growth Capital, as well as iQIYI.

Founded in 2017, Nreal is dedicated to offering consumer-facing AR user experience around the world. To be more specific, such experience allows a person to see the real world overlapped with digital information including text, graphics, and audio through a pair of AR glasses.

Nreal has not launched its AR glasses in China yet, while its flagship product Nreal Light, the lightweight glasses that can work with 5G compatible smartphones, has been retailing in markets of South Korea, Japan, and Spain.

NIO Capital made the investment as it is upbeat about future applications of AR/VR glasses in various scenarios related to automobiles, especially, in-car infotainment systems, according to Ian Zhu, a managing partner with NIO Capital.

“As optical technologies mature and computing power of terminals leaps, AR applications are being widely popularized to innumerable households and are expected to be new terminals in the intelligent life. We expect to see that Nreal, who takes the lead in AR industry, contributes to the upgrade of intelligent transportation system and smart city,” Mr. Zhu said.