On December 14, FUTURUS (Beijing) Black Technology Co., Ltd. (FUTURUS for short), a leader in automotive display technology, announced the close of a Series A financing round worth tens of millions of dollars, led by Cathay Capital, with participation from SoftBank China Venture Capital, Yihao Capital, and other investors. Previously, FUTURUS had also received angel- and Pre-A-round investments from InnoAngel and SoftBank China, respectively. FUTURUS specializes in core optical technologies including automotive Head-Up Displays (HUD), Augmented Reality Head-Up Displays (AR HUD), glasses-free holographic displays, and metasurface materials. Its imaging quality, field of view (FOV), power consumption, and reliability are all among the world's leading.

The company was invited to exhibit at the State Council's National Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week, and has been honored with the SVIEF-STAR Award (the Silicon Valley Innovation & Entrepreneurship Forum's "Star" recognition) and named among the Top 30 Most Investment-Worthy Enterprises in Automotive Intelligence. Among its achievements, FUTURUS's first aftermarket HUD product, PiLOTHUD, and its glasses-free holographic display technology won two Innovation Awards at CES 2018.

FUTURUS founder and CEO Xu Junfeng revealed that this round of funding will be used to ramp up mass production of the company's existing OEM and aftermarket HUD products and to drive R&D of new products. Currently, FUTURUS has entered into OEM HUD collaborations with several automakers spanning domestic self-owned brands, international first-tier brands, and internet-based smart car companies. Meanwhile, drawing on disruptive optical design, FUTURUS has completed R&D on full-windshield Augmented Reality display technology. Breaking through the industry bottleneck of displaying imagery only in a very small area (FOV of about 4°–5°, or about 10°–12° for next-generation products), the technology achieves the fusion of virtual imagery with the real environment across the entire front windshield—making it a true full-windshield AR HUD. The company expects to launch a new financing round in 2018 to fund iteration of this technology and its promotion in domestic and overseas markets.

Cai Mingpo, founder and chairman of Cathay Capital, said: "FUTURUS not only leads the world in next-generation full-windshield AR HUD R&D—across parameters such as field of view and brightness—but its demonstration prototype can project images directly onto the front windshield to form full-windshield color imagery, paving the way for the development of next-generation intelligent-vehicle Human-Machine Interfaces. At the same time, on the path to commercialization, the company has worked with domestic Tier-1 suppliers to industrialize various OEM HUD display technologies, and has already secured mass-production project orders from multiple OEMs. We are very optimistic about FUTURUS's substantial progress in both technology leadership and commercialization."

Dr. Song Anlan, Managing Partner of SoftBank China, said: "FUTURUS's team of scientists and engineers combines deep technological innovation with a rare commercialization capability. Its new technologies—AR HUD and glasses-free holography—will find applications across many fields, and its market prospects are limitless."