Mira

The Pitch

Mira is looking at the future through affordable, smartphone-powered augmented-reality smartglasses. Using a pair of transparent lenses, users see holograms overlaid seamlessly in the world around them with Mira's headset and a smartphone. The headset is a part of the accessible consumer-facing AR platform that the company will be distributing this year for a fraction of the cost of other headsets currently in development. The ingenuity behind the company's solution is that its entire experience is powered solely by its software and the hardware in an iPhone. Mira is joined by an advisory board, which includes the founder of the USC Game Pipes Lab, one of Google Cardboard's backend developers, and a lead from the Beats Headphones supply chain.

Traction

Mira is currently gearing up for an official launch and gaining rapid traction. The company is in the process of closing a $1.5 million seed round led by a handful of strategic investors from the top of the tech, investment, business, and entertainment worlds. The funding has accelerated Mira's timeline in the development of its hardware and software, with a soft-launch expected in the summer and customer roll-out expected in time for the holiday season. The company is in talks with a number of the top content-production studios to have a lineup of compelling apps at launch. Mira is also in talks with big-box retailers to enable a massive in-store holiday push.

Note: All data as of 1/31/17