Augmented reality (AR) glasses maker HiScene has raised RMB 120 million (USD 17.7 million) in its Series B+ round, 36Kr reported on Wednesday. MYEG Capital and Ondine Capital were among the investors.
HiScene was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Shanghai.
Liao Chunyuan, CEO of HiScene, told 36Kr that as the era of 5G approaches, there are major opportunities to develop AR technology, adding that the company has been cooperating with Chinese carriers since 2017 to commercialize 5G and AR.
On April 4, the company, along with Huawei and China Telecom’s Guizhou subsidiary, set up a system that enabled long-distance diagnosis and treatment for a patient who was experiencing chronic pain in her legs and is located in Zunyi, a small city in Southwest China’s Guizhou province.
A doctor in Shanghai communicated with a colleague in Zunyi while wearing the HiAR G200 smart glasses, offering instructions on how to treat the patient via the company’s AR information transmission platform, HiLeia. The connection was reportedly smooth and had no latency issues.
HiScene has not indicated whether the system has been used for other medical cases since then, but analysts expect this service to be in great demand as China’s western regions generally lack the medical care resources and training that are more common in the eastern provinces.
Tan Rui, an analyst with IDC China, told KrASIA in March that AR has already been adopted in manufacturing, medical care, and education at the enterprise-level. He predicted that more talent with the appropriate technical skill sets will join the industry in the near future.
In late March, Alibaba acquired the Israeli startup Infinity Augmented Reality. The Chinese conglomerate had previously invested USD 15 million in the firm in November 2016. Infinity claims that its technology can turn AR glasses into powerful content augmentation platforms.
36Kr is KrAsia’s parent company.
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