CHF7.3 million will help CREAL to bring true immersion to Virtual Reality

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20.12.2019
CREAL glasses

Lausanne based startup CREAL (formerly CREAL3D) closed a series A financing round raising CHF 4.3 million. In addition the start-up obtained financial support from the European Innovation Council and FIT.

The financing round was led by investiere and co-led by DAA Capital Partners. Institutional funds and private investors including successful technology entrepreneur Ariel Luedi and existing investors joined the investment. In addition, the project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 945983. The European Innovation Council selected CREAL as one of the European deep tech champions and awarded it a € 2.3M (CHF 2.5 M) EIC Accelerator grant and the Fondation pour l'Innovation Technologique (FIT) awarded CREAL a CHF 0.5 M subsidized loan too. The funding will enable CREAL to bring its light-field technology from the current prototype stage to the next-generation VR headsets and later AR headsets.

Today's Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) hardware has a major flaw. It typically uses two flat-screen images to create stereoscopic illusion of an image depth while ignoring the natural need of our eyes to focus on the correct distance as well. This conflict is one of the root causes of significant eyestrain and nausea caused by these devices.

CREAL develops light-field display technology to solve this problem. CREAL’s light-field display projects genuinely three-dimensional hologram-like images with near-retinal resolution. Each eye can change focus naturally between virtual objects in the image, just like it would in the real world.

CREAL was founded by Tomas Sluka, Alexander Kvasov and Tomas Kubes combining engineering, research, and entrepreneurial experiences from CERN, EPFL, and multiple startups; and joined by four key engineers from the former Intel Vaunt project. Its CHF 0.85 million seed round was closed in 5/2018 and led by SICTIC investors.

“CREAL has assembled a team with world-leading expertise in optics and electrical engineering for smart glass development. It has developed a light-field technology that outperforms competition and enables superior user experience for VR and AR glasses,” says Susanne Schorsch, investiere's manager responsible for the investment.

“This funding will transform us from a niche device producer to one of the key technology providers building the launchpad from which VR/AR markets truly take off,” says Tomas Sluka, the co-founder, CEO and VR/AR enthusiast.

(Press release)

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