Through the Smart Eyewear Craze: A Peak Behind the Deep Tech Scene and Microoled’s €21 Million Financing

By Christian Claussen, General Partner at Ventech & Yakun Wang, Head of Marketing & Communications at Ventech

In a world where new virtual reality (VR) glasses are creating a worldwide buzz and artificial intelligence (AI) applications continue to attract significant investments, deep technologies are finally surfacing to the attention of investors and governments alike. After remaining under the radar for the last 10 years, these technologies are now recognized as crucial for addressing the complex challenges of our world — starting with climate change — and merging into every aspect of our lives. As a result, private tech funds and European governments are making noteworthy efforts to fund and accelerate disruptive innovation in areas vital to the survival of our society.

(Detective Conan’s eyewear taps into reality.)

From low tech to deep tech, the sci-fi universe we see in so many movies might not be so fictional after all. In this blog, we will take a look at the current investment landscape and market dynamics that shape the deep tech sector. Additionally, we will explore the recent achievement of MICROOLED, a Grenoble-based innovative company specializing in cutting-edge OLED Microdisplay technology designed for AR/VR applications. The company has successfully secured a substantial investment of €21 million from Jolt Capital and Bpifrance, with the renewed participation from Ventech.

Let’s dive into it…

Status quo: the European deep tech market and investment approach

The deep tech market encompasses a wide range of fields. AI, computing, energy, and space have emerged as particularly promising areas. Nonetheless, the development of these innovations requires expertise, extensive research and development, as well as significant intellectual property and funds. While these solutions come with inherent risks on the technical and market levels, they also possess the potential to bring about disruptive and transformative changes across various industries.

“Over the first decade of the millenium, technology innovation in semiconductor, optical networking and (embedded) software architecture helped building the platform for modern smartphone and cloud infrastructure. From 2010 onwards, this led to predominant venture capital funding of so-called low-tech startups, mainly focusing on the digital economy’s application layer. Since innovation is cyclically fertilizing the entire stack across all layers, we believe that we are now in for a new phase of major progress in underlying deep-tech technologies. Advances in AI, VR/AR, high-performance cloud computing, related semiconductor IP and material sciences for sensors and energy storage will lay the grounds for a renewed application infrastructure and are therefore attracting early stage investors. Timing is however crucial in deep tech investing given the inherently long hockey sticks. Customer adoption challenges and final impact on overall system performance need careful consideration.“ explains Christian Claussen, General Partner at Ventech.

So, how are we doing in Europe? At first glance, we are still shy and lagging behind the American and Chinese tech giants. But according to the latest report by Dealroom, European deep tech startups received approximately $17.7 billion in funding in 2022, representing a significant 60% increase compared to 2020. Despite today’s challenging market conditions, the level of investments has remained high in the deep tech sector, positioning it as a top priority. This enthusiasm and support contribute to making Europe a highly competitive market for deep tech innovation, pushed by the high quality of our educational systems and scientific research institutions. Moreover, we witness increasing collaboration between governments and private investors in supporting early and late stage deep-tech startups. A few newly created initiatives are:

• TIBI 2 initiative in France: Following TIBI 1 launched in 2019, the French government, will mobilize another 7 billion euros of private funding from big insurance companies and banks to finance deep tech and climate tech start-ups at both an early and advanced stage.
• DeepTech & Climate Fonds (DTCF) in Germany: The DTCF is a new fund that is investing in the growth of companies with future technologies — up to one billion euros in the coming years. The funds come from the German government’s Future Fund and the ERP Special Fund.
• The Amadeus Apex Technology Fund from UK and Austria: European VC firms Amadeus and Apex partner up for a €80M early-stage ‘deep tech’ fund
• The European Innovation Council (EIC): Launched in June 2023, the EIC Scale Up 100 initiative will identify, promote, and support the growth of 100 promising Europe’s deep tech companies with the potential to become ‘unicorns’. One notable beneficiary is Ventech’s portfolio company Codasip who has been selected by the EIC funding initiative. Codasip provides customizable processor IP and tools for high-performance semiconductor chips .

MICROOLED: A deep tech success story

Apple’s unveiling of its Vision Pro headset has reignited enthusiasm in virtual and augmented reality start-ups that have been starved of funding from investors who have preferred to bet on AI. Ventech’s portfolio company MICROOLED, a French manufacturer and distributor of OLED microdisplays now unravels a new technological approach to consumer-compatible lightweight and long autonomy near-eye AR-solutions.

Lightweight OLED-based smart glasses are prone to become the wearable platform for augmented reality. Confirmed by Apple’s tech-choice for their Vision Pro, MICROOLED provides their own OLED-display and control system to enable the rapid emergence of wearable consumer devices. With its unique high luminance, contrast and low energy consumption technology, the company can address both consumer/recreational and industry/security markets. According to the 2022 report by KBV Research, the global market for microdisplays designed for AR/VR use could reach $4.4 billion by 2027, with at least 10% of the total value captured by OLED technologies.

Thanks to its leading global position as a component and subsystem provider for Light-AR devices, MICROOLED recently convinced sophisticated deep-tech investors to invest 21 Million Euro in growth capital. The additional funds will help Microoled to finance the development of the next range of full colour, high luminance OLED solutions, while further expanding manufacturing capabilities in Grenoble and grow their international sales teams.

“We are very pleased with Jolt Capital and Bpifrance joining our cap table, and to see that our historical shareholders Cipio Partners and Ventech continue their support. All of them understand deep tech and what’s at stake with innovation and sovereignty, both at the heart of MICROOLED’s strategy. Innovation is at the heart of our strategy, and this new funding will allow us to double down on our efforts to bring to market the most disruptive technologies in the field of AR.” says Eric Marcellin-Dibon, CEO of MICROOLED. (press release from July 12, 2023)

Conclusion

The steady level of innovation and investment in local companies like MICROOLED is an important step to accelerate European deep tech. Start-up collaboration, further ecosystem development and supportive government initiatives are all crucial in helping European deep-tech start-ups to compete on a global level. At Ventech, we combine long-standing expertise with proven historic deep-tech portfolio success and hence feel particularly well positioned to benefit from lucrative investment opportunities in Europe. We are thrilled to continue to serve emerging innovative deep-tech companies as their trusted partner, helping founders and management in financing and strategic positioning during their challenging path to become future leaders.