Distance Technologies

Distance Technologies
Information
Industry	Augmented reality, head-up displays, computational optics
Founded	2023 (registered as Lasia Oy; renamed June 2024)
Founder	Urho Konttori, Jussi Mäkinen, Mikko Strandborg, Joonas Itäranta, Thomas M. Carlsson, Ville Vehkaperä, Mikko Juhola, Petteri Timonen
Headquarters	Helsinki, Finland
Notable Personnel	Urho Konttori (CEO), Jussi Mäkinen (CMO)
Products	Lightfield head-up display, Field Operator HUD, Acuity OS
Website	https://distance.tech

Distance Technologies (Distance Technologies Oy, also styled Distance) is a Finnish company based in Helsinki that develops glasses-free mixed reality displays. Its core technology turns a transparent surface such as a car windshield, a vehicle window or a cockpit canopy into a head-up display that shows computer-generated 3D content with depth, without a headset or glasses. The company was started by a team that includes several former employees of the Finnish headset maker Varjo, among them chief executive Urho Konttori, a Varjo co-founder.

Distance came out of stealth in June 2024 with a prototype shown privately at Augmented World Expo and a US$2.7 million pre-seed round, then raised a 10 million euro seed round led by GV, the venture arm of Alphabet, in September 2024. Its early announcements emphasized automotive windshields; from early 2025 it focused more heavily on defense, and in 2026 it announced a head-mounted display for military vehicle crews. In 2026 it showed a windshield-wide display in a Kia concept car and received an investment from the automotive supplier FORVIA HELLA, which is co-developing a 3D augmented reality head-up display with it.

Reviewed 29 September 2026. Every claim checked against the cited Distance Technologies releases, Finnish trade register record, CNBC, Tech.eu, DEVELOP3D, Auganix, FORVIA HELLA and The Ghost Howls pages; titles, dates and funding figures confirmed. About review dates.

History

Founding and launch

The company was entered in the Finnish trade register in December 2023 under the name Lasia Oy. The name was changed to Distance Technologies Oy on 14 June 2024, and the register lists a Helsinki address. Its founding team lists eight people. Konttori, the CEO, had been chief technology officer of Varjo; Jussi Mäkinen, the CMO, was earlier chief marketing officer and a founding team member at Varjo and before that vice president of marketing at Rovio. Other members worked at Varjo, Unity Technologies, Nokia, Microsoft, Remedy Entertainment and Apple.

Distance announced itself on 13 June 2024. It said a prototype had been shown privately to analysts, journalists and influencers at AWE USA 2024 and that the technology demonstrator was being evaluated by several automotive manufacturers for windshields and windows. The same announcement disclosed a US$2.7 million pre-seed round led by FOV Ventures and Maki.vc, with further money from Business Finland and David Helgason's Foobar.vc. In the launch release Konttori said he had had the chance to "bottle lightning" once, as a co-founder of Varjo, and was now trying to do it again. DEVELOP3D reported at the time that the automakers evaluating the demonstrator included Kia.

Seed funding

On 24 September 2024 Distance announced a 10 million euro seed round led by GV, with FOV Ventures and Maki.vc also investing, about three months after the pre-seed round. CNBC, which put the round at about US$11.1 million, reported that the company had so far used simple optics and ordinary LCD panels to demonstrate the concept to partners and investors, and that Konttori planned to move the optics to a next generation in early 2025, taking the company from research into product development.

Shift toward defense

In January 2025 the American simulation company Aechelon Technology announced a partnership with Distance to develop 3D mixed reality head-up displays for in-flight pilot training and other aerospace simulation. According to Tech.eu, which interviewed Konttori and Mäkinen, the company began to focus more heavily on defense in early 2025 after realizing that automotive-style head-up displays are difficult to fit to tanks, which usually have no windshield.

A run of defense agreements followed. In March 2025 Distance joined Patria's eALLIANCE programme, which Business Finland funds, to build windshield displays for Patria's 6x6 armored vehicles that fuse sensor data for driving in darkness and smoke. In August 2025 it announced work with General Dynamics Land Systems UK on a night-vision windshield display for the Light Mobility Vehicle, which is based on the Ford Ranger, and said a working prototype would be shown in a Light Mobility Vehicle on the GDLS-UK stand at the DSEI exhibition in London on 9-12 September 2025. In September 2025 Distance announced a collaboration with the British vehicle maker Supacat to integrate its "JetFighter HUD" into the driver's line of sight on Supacat's High Mobility Transporter (HMT), with a demonstration at DSEI 2025. Tech.eu reported in January 2026 that the company was running field trials about every two weeks, including tests in the United Kingdom on the Ajax armored vehicle and trials with the Finnish Defence Forces.

2026

On 20 January 2026 Distance announced the Field Operator HUD, a head-mounted system for vehicle crews, and said it had been through field trials with military users in the UK and Finland. In April 2026 Kia showed the Vision Meta Turismo concept car at Milan Design Week with a Distance "panoramic lightfield HUD" across the whole windshield. Distance described Kia as the first consumer car maker to integrate its display technology, and said use in a production vehicle had not been announced.

In May 2026 Distance and the helmet maker Galvion announced a collaboration to put Distance optics and software into Galvion head systems, with integrated systems expected to be market-ready in 2027 after trials. On 4 June 2026 Supacat and Distance signed a three-year framework agreement that makes Distance Supacat's exclusive supplier of augmented reality and computational optics for navigation, safety and situational awareness across the HMT family. The two companies put that fleet at about 1,000 vehicles, and actual orders depend on demand from the UK Ministry of Defence and other customers. In July 2026 the company introduced Acuity, a software platform for defense, after demonstrating it with partners at the Eurosatory 2026 exhibition.

On 9 September 2026 FORVIA HELLA announced that it had invested in Distance through HELLA Ventures and entered a development partnership to build a mirrorless 3D augmented reality head-up display for cars, and Konttori said the two companies aimed to bring a new generation of AR head-up displays into series production. On 21 September 2026 the Japanese imaging company Morpho and Distance signed a memorandum of understanding to combine Morpho's image processing and 3D reconstruction with Distance's displays and Acuity OS, starting with defense applications.

Technology

Distance describes its display as a computer-generated 3D light field that mixes with the real view through a transparent surface, with depth set per pixel across the whole field of view, and nothing worn on the face or body. Konttori told CNBC that the system tracks where the viewer is looking and computes the light field for the exact positions of the viewer's eyes. The optics are layers placed on top of an ordinary LCD. They send separate light fields to the left and right eyes, and a further layer beneath adds brightness.

At AWE 2024, the prototype that The Ghost Howls tried used a flat surface on a desk with a sheet of glass inclined at 45 degrees above it, which reflected the rendered image toward the viewer. An Intel RealSense sensor tracked the viewer's head so the system could render a light field for that point of view, and an Ultraleap Leap Motion Controller 2 was placed in front of the setup for hand interaction. The reviewer compared the head-tracked 3D effect to that of the Nintendo 3DS. In 2026 Mäkinen described the company's system to Tech.eu as waveguide-based, comparing it to a flip-down car sun visor.

For defense, Distance combines the display with sensor fusion. Its vehicle displays overlay infrared and thermal imagery on the view through the windshield, and the company says they work with night vision goggles.

For automotive products, Konttori told Tech.eu that Distance plans to license its technology to Tier One suppliers: it works with them to build and certify the final hardware and provides the licenses, patents and software, a license-based revenue model. For defense work it may also supply the compute platform, sensors and software interfaces.

Products

Product	Announced	Description
Lightfield head-up display	2024 (prototype)	Glasses-free 3D display for windshields, windows and cockpits. A panoramic version spans the full windshield of the Kia Vision Meta Turismo concept.
JetFighter HUD	2025	Distance's name for its windshield head-up display for military ground vehicles, first announced for the Supacat HMT.
Field Operator HUD (FOH)	20 January 2026	Head-mounted display with see-through optics for vehicle crews inside and outside the vehicle. It works with the ATAK tactical software and night vision goggles. Distance said it would be available for field trials by the end of the first quarter of 2026, with wider availability through defense contractors in 2027.
Acuity and Acuity OS	2 July 2026	Software platform that connects vehicle sensors, battle-management systems and machine learning to Distance's optics. It includes an OpenXR runtime for augmented reality applications.

Partnerships

Date	Partner	Scope
20 January 2025	Aechelon Technology	3D mixed reality head-up displays for in-flight aerospace simulation
20 March 2025	Patria (eALLIANCE programme)	Windshield displays with sensor fusion for Patria 6x6 armored vehicles
28 August 2025	General Dynamics Land Systems UK	Night-vision windshield display for the Light Mobility Vehicle, with a prototype announced for DSEI 2025
2 September 2025	Supacat	JetFighter HUD in the High Mobility Transporter
23 April 2026	Kia	Panoramic lightfield HUD in the Vision Meta Turismo concept car
20 May 2026	Galvion	Integration of Distance optics and Acuity OS into helmet systems
4 June 2026	Supacat	Three-year framework agreement covering the HMT family
9 September 2026	FORVIA HELLA	Investment through HELLA Ventures and co-development of a mirrorless 3D AR head-up display for cars
21 September 2026	Morpho	Memorandum of understanding on spatial computing for automotive and defense

Reception

In a hands-on report from AWE 2024, the XR blog The Ghost Howls wrote that when the prototype worked well the virtual elements were crisp and the 3D effect believable. The reviewer also saw doubled images, halos and compressed depth from some angles, visible switching between viewpoints when he moved his head, a darker view of the real world through the semi-transparent glass, and some eye strain. The review concluded that the technology was promising but too early for practical use.