Dispelix

Dispelix
Information
Industry	Augmented reality optics, waveguide displays
Founded	2015
Founder	Antti Sunnari, Juuso Olkkonen, Jyrki Saarinen
Headquarters	Espoo, Finland
Notable Personnel	Antti Sunnari (CEO), Juuso Olkkonen (Chief Scientific Officer), Ismo Vartiainen (CTO)
Products	See-through diffractive waveguide displays (DPX 30-50°, Selvä)
Website	https://dispelix.com

Dispelix is a company that markets waveguide combiners. The Finnish company, formally Dispelix Oy, designs single-layer, full-color diffractive waveguides that are used as the see-through display element in AR glasses, smart glasses and other extended reality (XR) devices. It was founded in 2015 as a spin-off of the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and is headquartered in Espoo. Dispelix describes itself as a fabless supplier: it designs the waveguides with its own software, and the components are made by production partners.

It has partnered with Pegatron. Its other announced partners include the light engine makers Avegant, JBD, TriLite and Coretronic, the manufacturers Foxconn Industrial Internet and AAC Technologies, the materials suppliers HOYA and Mitsui Chemicals, and RTX's Collins Aerospace. In November 2025 AAC Technologies signed a definitive agreement to acquire the company.

Reviewed 27 September 2026. Checked founding, funding, awards, patents, DPX 30-50 spec table against the 2020 spec sheet, Selva, partnership dates, the AAC acquisition agreement and AAC's August 2026 earnings-call remarks against the cited primary sources. About review dates.

History

Research at VTT and founding

The technology behind Dispelix came out of waveguide research at VTT that started in 2011. The company was founded in 2015 by three Finnish research scientists: Antti Sunnari, who became chief executive, Juuso Olkkonen, who became chief scientific officer, and Jyrki Saarinen, who joined the board. Its first funding came from Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation. From its beginnings Dispelix prototyped its waveguides in the OtaNano micro- and nanofabrication infrastructure, using the Micronova cleanroom facilities in Espoo.

In March 2017 VTT reported that Dispelix was the only Finnish company on a list of the "50 most promising startups" compiled by the US data analysis company Quid and published by Bloomberg. VTT described the Dispelix display element as just one millimetre thick and said it could be freely shaped and mass produced. In a May 2017 overview of smart glasses optics, UploadVR wrote that Dispelix had produced a surface relief waveguide and had shown that the micro-ridges of such a waveguide could be printed onto the lens in an additive process, rather than only engraved.

Funding

On 2 November 2018 Dispelix raised a 12 million euro Series A round led by Lifeline Ventures, with Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment) and VTT Ventures taking part. The company said the money would pay for a mass production ramp-up of its see-through displays, and Sunnari said the technology was "now ready for the mass production ramp up".

In November 2021 the company announced a 33 million US dollar Series B round led by Atlantic Bridge. CCB Trust and Flashpoint joined as new investors, and the existing backers Lifeline Ventures, VTT Ventures, Finnish Industry Investment and 3M Ventures also took part, bringing total funding to 50 million US dollars. At that time Dispelix held 43 granted or pending patent families and expected its technology to reach the market in 2023. Aalto University later put the company's total venture capital at more than 50 million euros.

Growth

In October 2022 Photonics Finland named Dispelix its Company of the Year at the Optics and Photonics Days 2022 event. The association cited the company's rapid growth and its recruitment of photonics experts from 30 nationalities. In April 2024 Dispelix announced that it had been granted 200 patents, covering waveguide technologies and diffractive grating structures, waveguide manufacturing and grating fabrication methods, and light engines and systems.

According to Aalto University, the company had more than 150 employees from 30 nationalities, offices in Espoo and Joensuu, and subsidiaries in the United States and China. Its company page lists offices in Espoo, Joensuu and Palo Alto, California.

Technology

Dispelix makes see-through, full-color diffractive surface relief waveguides built on a single-plate architecture. Nanoscale gratings on the plate direct the image from a small projector toward the eye while the wearer still sees the real world through the waveguide. The gratings inside Dispelix waveguides typically measure 200 to 300 nanometres, according to VTT. In its 2018 funding announcement, Dispelix said it used a single waveguide where competing designs used several.

The company designs its waveguides with proprietary software. Its algorithms simulate the electromagnetic field in the grating structures, using both field-based and ray-optics methods to model coherent and incoherent light, and run on parallel, GPU and cloud computing. Optimization uses traditional algorithms as well as artificial intelligence. Manufacturing is wafer-based and carried out by partners, and Dispelix targets both near-eye and head-up display formats for consumer and enterprise products. Its waveguides are designed to work with several projector types, including DLP, LCoS, MicroLED and laser beam scanning engines.

For research and pilot-scale work, Dispelix uses VTT's Micronova cleanroom under a hybrid model that mixes its own engineers with VTT operator services. VTT converted the cleanroom from 150 mm to 200 mm wafer processing in 2025. In August 2025 Dispelix and the Swiss lithography company Eulitha announced a jointly developed nanofabrication process that combines Displacement Talbot Lithography with a three-layer stack and dry etching. The process can etch chromium hard masks up to 100 nm thick and is intended for slanted gratings made by reactive ion beam etching.

Polymer waveguides

In November 2020 Dispelix signed a partnership with the HOYA Group Optics Division to supply high refractive index glass wafers for its waveguides. In 2025 it announced work with Mitsui Chemicals on polymer waveguides made from Mitsui's Diffrar X167 material, which has a refractive index of 1.67. The first demo unit, a single-layer full-color waveguide whose single eyepiece weighs about 1.85 grams without a cover glass, was shown at SPIE AR, VR, MR in San Francisco in January 2025. Mitsui Chemicals said the polymer has greater impact resistance than glass.

Products

DPX 30-50°

On 6 October 2020 Dispelix released the DPX 30-50°, an upgrade of its earlier DPX 30° waveguide that extended the available field of view to between 30 and 50 degrees. The company offered it as a standalone display or as a turnkey module with an optical engine, and described it as full-color with 2D exit pupil expansion, a large eyebox and a small light incoupling area. The published specification sheet lists the following values:

Parameter	30° version	40° version	50° version
Field of view (diagonal, side injected)	30°	40°	50°
Eye relief	20 mm	16 mm	16 mm
Eye box	12.5 x 8 mm	12 x 6 mm	10 x 6 mm
Efficiency (waveguide / projector)	220 nits/lumen	110 nits/lumen	75 nits/lumen
Configurations	Monocular, binocular	Monocular, binocular	Binocular
Common values: LED centre wavelengths R 620, G 520, B 460 nm; input pupil diameter 5 mm; image focus distance infinity; MTF 20 lp/degree; transmittance 82% at normal incidence; contrast 40:1; dimensions 61 x 46 mm; thickness 0.8 mm; weight 8 g

In December 2020 Dispelix and Coretronic announced FOV 40 and FOV 50 projectors, based on Coretronic's DLP technology, for the DPX 30-50° evaluation kit.

Selvä

Dispelix Selvä is a single-layer, full-color waveguide display for eyeglass-style XR glasses. Dispelix describes it as thin and light, with an eyebox large enough to keep content in view and an image usable indoors and outdoors, and compatible with DLP, MicroLED and LCoS projectors. At AWE USA 2023 Dispelix and Avegant launched a reference display module that pairs Selvä with Avegant's AG-30L2 light engine; both components were available to buy at launch.

Reference designs

In October 2023 Dispelix announced separate agreements with Foxconn Industrial Internet and Pegatron to build reference designs for AR glasses around Selvä waveguides. Dispelix described a reference design as a complete concept version of AR glasses that can be put into mass production quickly. Pegatron showed its design at CES 2024. It has binocular full-color diffractive waveguides, miniature LCoS projectors, a 30-degree diagonal field of view, an 8-megapixel camera, a microphone and speakers, and was demonstrated with simultaneous translation.

Partnerships and collaborations

The table lists partnerships announced by Dispelix. Most are development or supply agreements, not shipping consumer products.

Date	Partner	Announcement
October 2020	STMicroelectronics, Applied Materials, Mega1, Osram	Founding members, with Dispelix, of the LaSAR (Laser Scanning for Augmented Reality) Alliance for laser-scanned AR smart glasses
November 2020	HOYA Group Optics Division	Supply of high refractive index glass wafers
December 2020	Coretronic	DLP projectors for the DPX 30-50° evaluation kit
January 2022	TCL Electronics	AR glasses technologies, including a full-color microLED solution, presented at CES 2022
March 2022	AAC Technologies	Strategic manufacturing partner for mass production of Dispelix waveguides
April 2022	Avegant	Waveguides optimized for Avegant's AG-30L 30-degree LED light engine
May 2022	TriLite	Display system pairing Dispelix waveguides with the Trixel 3 laser beam scanning projector
June 2022	JBD	R&D partnership combining JBD MicroLED projectors with Dispelix waveguides
January 2023	VividQ	3D waveguide combiner for holographic, variable-depth content
May 2023	Avegant	Selvä and AG-30L2 reference display module
October 2023	Foxconn Industrial Internet, Pegatron	AR glasses reference designs
October 2024	Collins Aerospace (RTX)	Long-term supply agreement and aerospace and defense display development
April 2025	Mitsui Chemicals	Polymer waveguides on Diffrar substrates
August 2025	Eulitha	Nanofabrication process for diffractive waveguide gratings

VividQ holographic combiner

In January 2023 Dispelix and VividQ announced a patent-pending waveguide combiner that, with VividQ's holographic display software, can show three-dimensional content at variable depth. The companies said a user could focus on images anywhere from 10 cm away to optical infinity, whereas existing AR headsets show content at a fixed focal distance, which the announcement linked to eye fatigue and nausea. The design works with Unity and Unreal Engine and covers a wide range of interpupillary distances. VividQ offered the technology for license to wearables makers, and Dispelix was named as the partner for mass production.

Collins Aerospace

In October 2024 Dispelix and Collins Aerospace, part of RTX, signed a long-term supply agreement for Dispelix waveguide displays in Collins products. The two companies also agreed to develop near-eye and head-up displays for aerospace and defense.

Acquisition by AAC Technologies

AAC Technologies, a Hong Kong-listed maker of acoustic, optical and other components for consumer electronics, became Dispelix's strategic manufacturing partner in March 2022. On 18 November 2025 its Singapore-incorporated subsidiary AAC Technologies Pte. Ltd. signed a definitive agreement to acquire all shares and other equity securities in Dispelix Oy. The companies said Dispelix would become a subsidiary of AAC when the deal closed, which they expected in the first half of 2026, and that its founding and current leadership would stay on with no change to daily operations. The law firm Roschier advised Dispelix, and Hannes Snellman advised AAC.

On its first-half 2026 earnings call in August 2026, AAC said that "by integrating Dispelix, a global waveguide leader, with our light engine team" it offered a one-stop waveguide and light engine optical system design and simulation solution, moving from component supplier to end-to-end AR display module provider. Later in the call AAC said that in the XR field "we acquired Dispelix".

See also

• DigiLens
• Lumus
• WaveOptics
• Waveguide display
• Optical combiner
• Near-eye display