Augmented reality startup Meta Company has raised $50 million Series B in a round that included Horizons Ventures Limited, Lenovo, Tencent, Banyan Capital, Comcast Ventures, and GQY.

According to TechCrunch, the round was raised on a $300 million valuation.

Founded in 2012, Meta is aiming to lead the next evolution of personal computing through augmented reality, replacing desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones with a more natural-to-use system set entirely in a pair of glasses.

The company’s products enable people to manipulate digital objects or holograms with their hands, as well as create and share digital content with others in the same room or miles away, delivering what they describe as feeling like a natural extension of the human mind and hand.

Meta currently offers the Meta 2 Development Kit, a $949 augment reality headset that includes a 2560×1440 display resolution showing images in a 90-degree field of view (FOV).

“It is incredibly gratifying to have the support of big thinkers and investors who understand the importance of creating a new human-computer interface, anchored in science,” Meta Chief Executive Officer Meron Gribetz said in a statement. “Our friends at Tencent, Lenovo, Horizons Ventures, Comcast Ventures and all the other investors really get what we’re doing and why Meta is different from the other players in AR. They understand that the combination of our advanced optical engines along with our neuroscience-based interface design approach are what will create a computing experience that is 100x easier to use and more powerful than traditional form factors.”

Up and coming

Meta may not be one of the better well names in the augment reality space, particularly compared to Magic Leap, Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s Hololens, but it can certainly be described as being up and coming, in that the company is attempting to carve out its own niche in a rapidly developing marketplace.

Interestingly Meta is building a vertical offering in terms of not only developing its own headset but also its own software, including a software development kit for third-party developers; this is either an inspired move, or a crazy one given that both Microsoft with augmented reality, and Google in virtual reality, are primarily seeking to become the standard software providers for AR and VR devices.

Including the new round Meta has raised $73 million to date; previous investors include Tim Draper, BOE Technology Group, Y Combinator, Garry Tan, Alexis Ohanian, Danhua Capital, and Zappos.

The company said it would use the new funds to continue to build upon its hardware and software technology base, business expansion, including app development, and developing the next generation of its technology, Meta 3.

Image credit: Meta.