Li Hongwei, founder and CEO of Thunderbird Innovation, said in an exclusive interview with Rongzhong Finance, "It can basically be judged that 2025 or 2026 will usher in an industry inflection point, and the first 'iPhone' in the AR field will appear." ”
Today, Thunderbird Innovation, a consumer-grade AR brand, announced the completion of a new round of financing of 100 million yuan, which is also its third round of financing in the past year.
The rapid development of 5G technology, the implementation of the metaverse concept, and the continuous improvement of hardware ecological content have boosted the recovery of the AR industry.
Completed three rounds of financing in one year.
The AR industry began in the 60s of the 20th century, and in the development process of more than 50 years, it has gone through a period of technology germination, expectation expansion and trough, and the rapid development of 5G technology, the implementation of the concept of the metaverse, and the continuous improvement of hardware ecological content and other factors have boosted the recovery of the AR industry, and it has entered a period of recovery and growth in 2019.
Thunderbird Innovation, a consumer-level AR brand, was born in the recovery and growth period of the AR industry. According to public information, Thunderbird Innovation was established at the end of 2021, incubated by TCL Electronics, and the core team comes from Tencent, DJI, Meta, OPPO, iQiyi, and various cutting-edge start-ups, and has extensive accumulation in the fields of near-eye display optical design, self-developed AI algorithm models and multi-modal human-computer interaction.
Compared with many AR startups, Thunderbird Innovation has a more unique company structure, "Thunderbird Innovation is incubated by TCL, and TCL can inject a variety of resources into it. At the same time, Thunderbird Innovation is a completely independent team, a start-up company, with a very flexible AR-oriented mechanism, process and values. Li Hongwei, founder and CEO of Thunderbird Innovation, said that this special architecture gives Thunderbird innate development advantages, "because AR machine + ecology is a test of comprehensive strength, and it is also a subversive innovation, which requires new methods and ideas." ”
Thunderbird Innovations at MWC 2024).
Although Thunderbird Innovation has only been established for more than two years, it is experiencing the fastest two years of development in the AR industry. Standing in the "tuyere". According to the timeline, Li Hongwei divides the development of Thunderbird innovation into four stages.
The first stage is to decide whether to do it, whether the main technical direction of this stage is correct, and whether the time to start the layout is appropriate; The second stage is to determine the company's product direction, not only to make more mature products, but also to make future-oriented real AR glasses, especially in technology breakthroughs; The third stage is to achieve a breakthrough in productization and sales of products with relatively mature technology; The fourth stage is an important underlying technological breakthrough in future-oriented AR glasses. ”
It is precisely because of this thinking that Thunderbird Innovation has chosen the development route of Birdbath and optical waveguide dual-line layout. Among them, Birdbath has relatively mature technology and product experience, which can train the team and continue to "hematopoiesis" for the company's development; Thunderbird Innovation also firmly believes that MicroLED+ optical waveguide is the ultimate path to consumer-grade AR and is a truly future-oriented technology.
Since its establishment, Thunderbird innovation has won the favor of a lot of capital. Today, Thunderbird Innovation once again announced the completion of a new round of financing of 100 million yuan, which was jointly invested by Huatai Zijin, Yanchuang Group and other institutions. It is reported that the financing amount will be used for the technology research and development, mass production and market popularization of a new generation of consumer-grade AR glasses, as well as to promote the ecological construction of AI+AR glasses.
So far, Thunderbird Innovation has completed three rounds of financing in the past year, and its main investors include Fosun Fortune, Rongyi Investment, Cheers**, Innova Angel**, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, Runxing Ruihua, Bose Glasses, Weed Venture Capital, Hainan Yingtian, etc.
It is worth mentioning that this round of financing is also the first time that a domestic market-oriented venture capital institution has invested in the AR brand in the past six months. With the formation of Apple's Vision Pro lighthouse effect, Li Hongwei believes that the attention of the entire capital market to the AR industry will grow rapidly in the future. "In the past, the entire industry was doing technology pre-research, and then it will enter the stage of real commercialization and product exploration, and we will also iterate on products from multiple product lines, as well as break the marketing circle, so that AR products can truly cross the chasm. ”
Self-developed AR core optical devices.
Prior to the founding of Thunderbird, the company's optical team had been doing research on AR industry technology for many years. Prior to this, there were two problems in the industry, on the one hand, the industry has been difficult to break through in technology, and the products released at home and abroad have not been able to achieve full-color highlighting in the form of thin and light glasses; On the other hand, the application scenarios are not rich and powerful enough.
At that time, Li Hongwei believed that the combination of optical waveguide and MicroLED was the best solution for consumer-grade AR glasses, and the key to breaking the game was the improvement of technology.
At the end of 2021, at the same time as the innovation and establishment of Thunderbird, Thunderbird released the Thunderbird Smart Glasses Pioneer Edition, which is also the industry's first binocular full-color MicroLED holographic optical waveguide AR glasses. Although this product has not been officially mass-produced, it shows Thunderbird's thinking in AR glasses in terms of weight, display, ID design, etc., and also lays the foundation for the later Thunderbird X2.
In October 2023, Thunderbird X2 was officially launched on domestic e-commerce platform sales, this glasses is the world's first mass-produced binocular full-color MicroLED light waveguide AR glasses, which has been highly praised by high-tech users at home and abroad, and is considered to represent the "highest level" of current consumer-grade AR glasses. According to reports, the ultra-small full-color light engine equipped with Thunderbird is independently developed and mass-produced by Thunderbird Innovation, and the mass production yield is as high as 92%. At the same time, Thunderbird has also developed a micron-level eye system for Thunderbird X2, which solves the problem of spatial 6DOF alignment between the left and right gaze engines and optical waveguides, and realizes full-color 3D display.
In January 2024, Thunderbird Innovation exhibited the third-generation MicroLED optical waveguide glasses Thunderbird X2 LITE at CES in the United States. According to Thunderbird Innovation, the design and mass production process of the full-color microLED light engine of this generation of glasses have been further optimized, and the volume is about half of the previous generation, which is the world's smallest full-color microLED light engine that can be mass-produced. In addition, Thunderbird has also redesigned the ID, optical waveguide process, and materials of the X2 Lite, so that the weight of the whole machine has been reduced to about 60g, which is close to conventional sunglasses. The glasses are expected to be officially released and sold in the third quarter of this year.
Thunderbird X2 Lite).
According to the report, the core of AR glasses is optical display, and the current main optical solutions include optical waveguides, birdbaths, prisms, and freeform surfaces. Among them, freeform surface and BirdBath technology are highly mature and can achieve large-scale mass production, and the current consumer market mostly uses Birdbath solutions, and uses them with Micro OLED screens to achieve better light efficiency. The optical waveguide solution can achieve more than 80% light transmittance, and with low-power, high-brightness microLEDs, it can provide more realistic 3D images while showing the real world.
Li Hongwei said that the optical waveguide can solve the display problem of AR glasses very well. "First, the user can see reality directly, and second, other people can also see the user's eyes directly, enabling direct eye contact. In addition, in the environment of optical waveguides, micro LEDs can achieve very good results, and high brightness can be achieved with very low power consumption. On top of that, combined with the Thunderbird X2 and X2 Lite, we have proven that AR glasses can do very well on this route. ”
Accelerate the construction of the AI+AR ecosystem.
Good hardware capabilities have also laid the foundation for the development of the AR glasses ecosystem. Li Hongwei said that a series of work such as optical display and special chip platform are laying the foundation for ecological construction.
As the helmsman of the company, Li Hongwei has repeatedly created the industry's first App OS product with a daily activity of more than 10 million from 0 to 1, and has rich practical experience in Internet applications and software and hardware. The TCL behind Thunderbird innovation has also done a long time of accumulation and precipitation in the field of user scenarios such as ** and games, which are of great help to Thunderbird innovation to build an AR ecosystem.
Thunderbird Innovation has also introduced a large number of ecological partners, including Tencent, Alibaba, iQiyi, Bilibili, Unity and other leading enterprises at home and abroad. In October 2023, Thunderbird Innovation reached a cooperation with WeChat Mini Program, and users can experience the AR glasses version of the WeChat Mini Program by wearing Thunderbird X2. In addition, Thunderbird Innovation also launched a developer program to support developers through technical support and bonus incentives to accelerate the construction of the AR ecosystem.
According to Li Hongwei, "In order to promote the establishment of the ecology faster, Thunderbird has built a very good foundation for ecological development, an environment for ecological developers, and supports a variety of SDKs, including Unity, Web XR, Mini Programs, etc. We also incorporate the most advanced AR capabilities of AI, and provide support to developers while developing them ourselves. In addition, we are also carrying out in-depth strategic cooperation with ecological companies and Internet companies, which is a systematic project. ”
In addition, the commercial landing of AIGC has promoted the advent of a new round of artificial intelligence development, and AI has begun to accelerate the integration with thousands of industries, and AR glasses are also a high-quality enabling field of artificial intelligence. The industry generally believes that AI can effectively improve the intelligent attributes of AR products, provide intelligent, diversified, and personalized services for end users, promote product quality improvement, and promote the increase in the number of users.
At the same time, IDC believes that from the end of 2023, AI+AR will help users achieve better NLP interaction and display screen presentation, and in multiple major AR use scenarios such as content generation, translation, and navigation, the difference in AI capabilities will become the key to the differentiation of manufacturers' products when the current hardware level is relatively close.
Li Hongwei pointed out, "We believe that glasses and mobile phones are two very good AI carriers, and mobile phones have become a widely used terminal device. But glasses can do it better. AR glasses will endow AI with sensory abilities that are highly consistent with human beings, and make AI truly become people's 'external brain', enhancing people's ability to process visual information and audio information. ”
Li Hongwei, founder and CEO of Thunderbird Innovation).
Thunderbird Innovation has made a lot of layouts in the direction of AI, including the self-developed Thunderbird large model platform, as well as the large model voice assistant Rayneo AI, and the large model developer platform Rayneo AI Studio based on AR glasses, in the Q1 quarter of this year, Thunderbird Innovation will also release the AR glasses proprietary application**Rayneo AI Store.
According to Li Hongwei, "First, we know that large models can't be memorized for a long time, but users want the product to remember what they said and learn their own usage habits, so we independently developed a function of how to make a large model remember users' long-term usage habits; Second, we have built a large model middle platform, which can schedule the capabilities of different large models, because the capabilities of different large models are different in different scenarios. Third, we have built Thunderbird AI Studio to provide support for developers and enable them to make better AI+AR applications; Fourth, it is to use AI large language models to control all the functions of glasses, which is a functional system designed for large model delivery, which is not yet complete, and we are exploring it. ”
According to Thunderbird Innovation, the Thunderbird X2 Lite that will be released in the future will show the ability to combine a variety of AI and AR glasses.
When will the "iPhone" in the AR field appear.
According to data from Lotu Technology (RUNTO), AR products will be soaring in 2023, and the sales volume of China's consumer-grade AR equipment will reach 2020,000 units, up 115% year-on-year. Thunderbird innovates with 37The 4% share ranks first in China's online monitoring market.
Lotu Technology.
In the case of deep cultivation of the domestic market, Thunderbird Innovation is also accelerating the layout of overseas markets.
Li Hongwei said, "AR glasses is a new general-purpose computing platform, and we believe that its future must be global, and the scale of the entire overseas market must be larger than that in China." Our rhythm is to start at home and then quickly move into other key countries, such as the United States, Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Thunderbird's layout of overseas channels is relatively systematic, including online and offline, and will focus on online in the near future, and will also pay attention to rapidly emerging channels, such as TikTok and so on. ”
Li Hongwei believes that there are very big opportunities overseas, and he said that some countries in overseas markets have a relatively good scientific and technological environment, so users have a high degree of recognition for new products.
At present, there are still many pain points in the industry. According to the analysis of the report of Yiou think tank, the overall development of the AR industry is still facing challenges such as low user penetration rate and mature technology. At present, the AR user group has not yet broken the circle, and the proportion of rigid scenarios is low, resulting in a low overall user penetration rate in the industry. In addition, the underlying software and hardware technologies of AR are not yet mature, and there is still a lot of room for improvement in basic technology, content production, perception interaction, virtual purchase integration, and terminal equipment.
In this regard, Li Hongwei believes, "First of all, it can basically be judged that 2025 or 2026 will usher in an inflection point in the industry, and the first 'iPhone' in the AR field will appear, which will be very similar to daily glasses, with a good optical display effect and relatively light weight, and it can achieve three functions - mobile phone scenes, AI personal assistants, and AR scenes; Secondly, the core of future AR glasses, the hardware aspect is the micro LED + optical waveguide of optical display, and the ecological aspect is the combination of AI and AR glasses. ”
At this stage, although AR products for consumers are still not widely popular, with the support of smartphone operating system developer tools, more and more people are starting to use AR products, which are currently more used for movie viewing, games, mobile office, etc., with more application content landing, information acquisition ability is improved, learning and education, shopping, life navigation and other scene applications will be more abundant.
IDC**, China's AR shipments are expected to continue to grow rapidly in 2024, with a growth rate of more than 100%. Zhao Siquan, a senior analyst at IDC China, believes that compared with the strategy of vigorously subsidizing new products to drive shipments in the previous two years, the current manufacturers have begun to focus on a certain degree of active user conversion, continuous content application repurchase, product innovation and other aspects. In the context of the cost of the first chain and the rich content, China's AR VR market will develop in a more healthy and sustainable direction.