Camera-free smart-glasses maker Even Realities hits $1bn on a $150M raise

Meta has sold millions of camera-equipped smart glasses, and landed in a privacy storm for it. A Shenzhen startup is betting $1bn that the smarter move is to leave the camera off.

Even Realities has raised $150m at a $1 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported. Chinese giants Meituan and Tencent led the round. It makes the three-year-old firm a unicorn, and a pointed bet against the camera-first design that Meta and Snap have made the norm.

No camera, by design

Even’s glasses do not film you. Instead, a tiny display built into the lens shows notifications, live translations and directions, controlled by a companion ring you tap and swipe. Founder Will Wang, an ex-Apple engineer, argues the point is to stay present, with information surfacing only when you need it.

Leaving out the camera is also a privacy stance. Voice features turn speech into text rather than storing recordings, the app encrypts user data, and Wang says the system meets Europe’s strict privacy rules. It is a direct jab at the market leader.

Meta’s shadow

Meta still dominates, with the vast majority of smart-glasses shipments, and its Ray-Ban line keeps expanding. But a privacy crisis now dogs it. A lawsuit claims contractors overseas reviewed users’ footage, and lawmakers are drafting rules to curb covert recording. Even’s pitch is blunt: a camera you can switch off is weaker than a camera that was never there.

A Chinese company with a Western face

Even is an unusual hybrid. It sits in Shenzhen and runs on Chinese capital, yet it does not sell in China. More than half its users live in the United States, its fastest-growing market.

Japan, South Korea, the Middle East and Europe follow. Its founding team blends alumni of Apple and Oppo with European eyewear houses like Lindberg. It joins a wave of Chinese hardware makers chasing global buyers.

The business looks real, not just aspirational. Even says it was the first in its category to sell more than 10,000 pairs, and it grew from around 40 staff to several hundred. Its glasses start at $599, with prescription lenses and the ring pushing a typical order near $1,000.

The open question

The field is crowding fast. XREAL and Viture have each raised heavily, and shipments of display-only glasses are climbing sharply, Tech Funding News noted. The risk is familiar for any gadget: novelty fades.

Even’s wager is that “quiet” glasses, worn all day and never recording, will outlast the flashier camera models once the excitement cools. Ambient computing has promised this before. This time, the selling point is what the device deliberately cannot do.