Metalenz ships millions of its tiny cameras and powers up with $30M B round
Summary
Its not meant for taking clear ordinary images but providing the kind of extra info needed by those cameras depth, object and material recognition, and so on.Weve seen this type of thing before, but usually in university research labs showing one-off prototypes. But Metalenzs camera tech isnt just capable of being manufactured theyre already shipping orders in the millions.If youre wondering wait, why havent I heard of it then? A particularly promising application of the tech is facial recognition for phones.The Face ID in iPhones may work well, but the drawback is that its an expensive and complex near-field 3D sensing module that takes up a ton of room at the top of the phone, and basically does nothing 99% of the time. Thats Apples decision to make, and people will pay over a grand for their phones, but what about budget Android handsets that ship in the tens of millions too?We see a really strong beachhead and market need for enabling a much better and cheaper and thinner facial recognition solution outside the iPhone. Thats why theyre shipping out units in the coming months to potential customers interested in the possibility.Testing and scaling up the PolarEyes product is where most of the $30 million in funding will be headed.