LetinAR's $18.5M Investment in AI Glasses

0:28Happy birthday, America! You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. South Korea's Latin AR is building the optics behind AI glasses. So today we're going to talk about this company Latin AR and they're actually behind some of the technology that goes into the metaglasses which are becoming, they're kind of blowing up right now.

1:14Everyone is using them and it's a technology that actually has some use cases behind it, some AI technology. So today we're going to talk about Latin AR and how they have been able to blow up as a company because of this and how sometimes some of these smaller companies in the background are actually the ones who are growing the most and their technology is what is driving a lot of these products and services. So before we get into that, Jayden, why don't you tell them about our school community? Yeah, every single week, Jamie and I break down a strategy, a tool, a tip, something that we're doing in our actual business to use AI to grow and scale.

1:52Uh, this week we did a whole episode talking about, um, the, the strategy and the behind the scenes on a viral, a viral post I did on LinkedIn. It got a hundred thousand impressions, a viral comment I did on LinkedIn that got, uh, almost 80 ,000 impressions and how all of that spilt over to Reddit to get, uh, a 1300 upvotes on a Reddit post. Um, and then the, the traffic that my website saw from all of this. So if you're interested in that whole behind the scenes story, I'm sharing my screen. I'm walking through all the metrics, my Google search console, like everything. Go check it out. It's on the AI Hustle school community.

2:31Along with, we also break down and I share how I used AI to do a lot of the, a lot of this help with a lot of this because I had to respond to 150 comments. But if you are interested in learning how to grow and scale your business, whether that's marketing like today's, or if you're looking at vibe coding, this is something we both, two of these things we do a ton of on the school community. It's$19 a month and we share tons of exclusive info, strategies, secrets, and also the metrics, like how much money we actually make from different things. So this should hopefully give you a good idea and inspire you on your journey, whether you're a side hustler or whether you're growing and scaling your business or career with AI tools.

3:06So go check it out. It's the AI Hustle School community linked in the description. It's only$19 a month. So we try to make this affordable for everyone and we'd love to have you as a member. Okay, let's talk about what's going on in South Korea. Yeah. So let an AR, the thing that, the reason why I was really excited about this story is because I think so often we talk about, you know, Anthropics getting close to a trillion dollars and like all of these companies that are just making like, you know, gobsmacking amounts of money. And they're kind of the main AI model providers. They're the main companies.

3:36They're the, the, the NVIDIAs. I recently saw a post on LinkedIn about a 24 year old hedge fund manager that he turned$750 ,000 into like 5 billion. And then he turned that into like 12 billion. And I think he's getting close to turning that into like$20 billion. And he basically has been betting against, well, right now, he's basically betting that the people that are going to win in all of this AI race right now are not just OpenAI and Anthropic. They're actually a lot of the infrastructure that supplies that. So I think he probably bet early on NVIDIA when that was like less of an obvious bet.

4:14Now NVIDIA's got this massive, you know, multi-trillion dollar valuation. And so I think actually right now I saw that he's shorting NVIDIA, which it could just be hedging his bets, but apparently he's shorting NVIDIA. And instead he's investing heavily into land data centers and power companies. So like the infrastructural backbone. Anyways, I saw this post. I was breaking down what his strategy, what his investment strategy was. I was so fascinated. And so when I saw this story about letting AR, I was like, oh my gosh, it's one of those companies that isn't the forerunner on a trend, but it's kind of one of the components that is supplying and it's making just a killing.

4:55So we kind of want to go into what's going on with Latin AR. But yeah, I guess like Jamie, what were your thoughts on this company? Yeah, well, at first I was reading about the Meta Ray-Bans and things, but it looks like this company actually, they're one of the forefront people who are making the optic module for some of these more intense, intense AI glasses that actually have a projection overlay of your surroundings. So it looks like this is quite proprietary and something very difficult to pull off. No one has really been able to yet. But this company is backed by LG. So definitely in the tech space and hardware space.

5:38But yeah, so apparently it the they sell the optic module that projects images of your field of vision. So, and then, um, so, you know, part of the issue here is we've seen all those, the pictures of like Mark Zuckerberg with these massive, like silly looking goggles on that have this, that supposedly project, you know, things over your reality. And it kind of, it doesn't really look that appealing to be honest. Uh, but this company here is, is trying to make that small and make it actually something, that you would actually want to wear to work. So I think this is pretty exciting technology, actually.

6:16And I would love to see the finished product and see exactly what it looks like. So yeah. Have you read at all, Jayden, about how this actually works? Yes. It's really fascinating. There's some interesting things. Well, one thing I want to bring up though is they just raised$18.5 million from Korean Development Bank, Lottie Ventures. So they've raised over$40 million at this point and they're doing, they have an IPO planned for next year. So, and it's, but it's going to be in Seoul. So, I mean, it's a Korean company, so they're going to be IPO-ing in Seoul. Of course, these numbers are, I'm sure a lot of people are like, psh, Anthropik's worth a trillion dollars.

6:50This is nothing. Okay. Well, for non-American companies, this is amazing. They're crushing it. And honestly, I mean, even for American companies, this is an amazing, this is an amazing bet. I'm excited to see what happens here, but it is interesting. You know, when you've raised 41 million and you have an IPO planned, whereas like, I don't know, Anthropic probably pays their top researcher 41 million a year. I don't know, right? But it's interesting what they're doing though. You're mentioning their technology. So they have something called pin tilt. And basically what it does, there's two ways to do AR and VR.

7:21One, which is what we're all more familiar with, is something like an Oculus headset or meta, I guess we should call a meta headset or something. I don't know. And that is that the lights and the projection is projecting onto the screen in front of you. Or if it's glasses, the glasses, like the glass, it's projecting onto the glass. So that's how a lot of this is working. But there's a new strategy, which sounds terrifying, but I've actually seen this played out. And I think Meta is working on some things here where there's actually a light in there that directs straight onto your retina. So there's two ways to do it.

7:54You can direct the light onto the glass that you're looking at, or you can direct the light straight onto your retina. And that's what they have cracked with their pin tilt technology is that they're able to shoot the light straight on your retina very hard. You can imagine like, I don't know, shining lasers on your eye doesn't sound good in any way, shape or form. So they've done this well. And they're working with a bunch of really interesting people in this space because of it. One thing I wanted to bring up though is just like the overarching industry trends, global AI glasses shipments hit 8.7 million units last year.

8:30That's 300 % more than the year before. This year is going to be crazy. I mean, Apple's working on this. The Ray-Bans are selling out like hotcakes. We have so many different people trying to get in on this. So I mean, Snapchat is trying to, I don't know, the Snap Spectacles, they're trying to make them come back. I don't know if they ever really took off, but I feel like they missed the boat. Poor Snapchat. But anyways, Latin AR, it doesn't matter who, whether it's Meta or Google, because yeah, Google, Meta, and Apple are all working on this. But between those three big players, they're helping supply a lot of the components and this company is just going to crush it because of that.

9:07They also have a bunch of interesting customers. One of them is out of Switzerland. It's called Aegis Rider and it's actually a motorcycle helmet. So inside the motorcycle helmet, the visor on the motorcycle helmet, And actually, that's a great use case because, you know, it's more like the Oculus glasses or like the whole headset or like the Apple, you know, the Apple headset as well. Like they look ridiculous, but I guess if they were, they look like ski goggles is what everyone calls the Apple one. But I'm like, well, if it was built into actual ski goggles, I'm sure it'd be pretty cool. And I think it's the same thing with the helmet.

9:44If it's built into an actual motorcycle helmet, it's pretty cool. So yeah, I think between the two of those, they have a lot of exciting stuff going. But this company plus many others, I think, is where you want to look at like, what are the companies that are making the components going into the major AI trends coming out right now? And a lot of those companies are good bets to to watch grow as you see a lot of these trends take off. Yeah, I think this is a really interesting problem that they're solving because all those big ridiculous headsets you described, part of the function is to block out the sunlight and the ambient light, which is going to overpower the screen itself.

10:25And the other part is, I would assume, battery because you're basically having a screen that projects. So you have two different issues here. this, this pin tilt technology, they explain it kind of like traditional, those traditional ones are working like a TV where you have this light coming from the TV, but a lot of it escapes into the room. The point they're trying to make is only the light that hits your eye is what really matters. So if they can direct it to your eye, then they can not only, they don't have to worry as much about blocking out all the other lights around. So you're not going to have that form factor issue, but it's also going to save on battery power because there's not that wasted light going anywhere else.

11:11So I would, I would love to try these again. Like you said, I don't know how I would feel about lasers being shined into my eye all the time, but I think, I think it could be a really cool thing. I'm excited to see there, see what happens with this company. Hey everybody, Lady Luck here and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on spinquest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to spinquest.com. Get yourself a$30 coin pack for just$10.

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