Gixel, a German deeptech startup, has raised €5 million in a seed round to deliver breakthrough optical displays for AI and AR glasses.
As AI’s vision and voice technologies advance, global tech giants are racing to bring AI and AR eyewear to the mainstream. However, the industry’s biggest challenge remains creating ultra-light, power-efficient, high-quality optical see-through displays.
Gixel’s proprietary architecture tackles this challenge, offering a modular display solution designed for today’s AI glasses and scalable to tomorrow’s full-lens immersive AR, with fields of view as large as the lenses themselves.
Gixel’s technology delivers optical see-through displays with smartphone-level image quality, excellent transparency when turned off, and ultra-efficient, low-weight, low-heat performance.
Built for industrial-scale production, it supports curved lenses for sleek designs, variable focal planes for accurate depth perception, and a flexible field of view, ranging from small areas to full-lens coverage. Its modular design gives OEMs the flexibility to customise the field of view and display placement across the lens.
Founded in 2019, with AR display development underway since 2021, by Fraunhofer optics experts Dr.-Ing. Miro Taphanel and Dr.-Ing. Ding Luo with entrepreneur Felix Nienstaedt, Gixel has quietly assembled a world-class team of 15 international specialists in display physics, nano-optics, system engineering, and high-precision manufacturing.
We’re not just solving display challenges—we’re making the breakthrough that finally makes wearable AI and AR real,
said Felix Nienstaedt, co-founder and CEO of Gixel.
The oversubscribed round was led by Oculus VR co-founder Brendan Iribe, former Chief Futurist at 20th Century Fox and Paramount, and founding team member at RED Digital Cinema, Ted Schilowitz, FlixBus founders Jochen Engert, Daniel Kraus, and André Schwämmlein, Germany’s Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND), and early-stage VC firm LEA Partners.
Ted Schilowitz, former Chief Futurist at 20th Century Fox and Paramount and founding team member at RED Digital Cinema, commented:
As a Futurist at two major movie studios, I’ve seen countless wearable display concepts. Gixel’s team and approach stand out for their real advances in resolution, form factor, and usability—they’re the ones to watch.
The company is currently building a fully functional prototype and preparing developer kits for pilot partnerships.
Gixel plans to raise a Series A next year to scale manufacturing and meet industry demand.
Lead image: Gixel founders | Photo: Uncredited
Source: Read MoreÂ