Guangli

Guangli
Information
Type	Private
Industry	Augmented Reality, consumer electronics
Founded	2017
Founder	Zhang Zhuopeng, Wei Yizhen
Headquarters	Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
Notable Personnel	Zhang Zhuopeng (CEO)
Products	AR smart swim goggles, light-field AR glasses, holographic optical waveguides
Website	https://www.holoswim.com

Guangli (Hangzhou Guangli Technology Co., Ltd., known in Chinese as Light Particle Technology) is a Chinese Augmented Reality company best known for the Holoswim line of AR smart swimming goggles. It was founded in 2017 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, by Zhang Zhuopeng and Wei Yizhen, classmates from the optoelectronics department of Zhejiang University, and it describes itself as a high-tech enterprise built around light-field and holographic display technology aimed at consumer-grade AR products.

Rather than building a general-purpose headset, Guangli concentrates on lightweight, single-purpose wearables that float a small set of real-time data in the wearer's line of sight. Its central product, Holoswim, is a pair of swim goggles with an OLED micro-display and a thin holographic optical waveguide that show metrics such as distance, pace, lap count, and heart rate while a person is swimming. The company says it holds more than 170 Chinese and international patents across the supply chain for this kind of holographic display.

History

Guangli was established in early 2017 in Hangzhou near West Lake. The founding team came from universities in China and abroad, including Zhejiang University, Cornell University, and the University of Delaware, and the company set out to make AR Glasses comfortable enough to wear for long periods by using light-field and waveguide optics instead of the bulkier optics common at the time. Chief executive Zhang Zhuopeng, who studied optoelectronics at Zhejiang University and later earned a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering along with a finance degree at the University of Delaware, is the public face of the company and is nicknamed "Light Particle" after the firm's Chinese name.

The company's first product was not a swim device but a pair of consumer AR glasses. At CES Asia 2019 in Shanghai, Guangli introduced what it called its first light-field AR glasses, a sunglasses-style design with a diffractive waveguide; the developer version weighed about 126 grams, with a planned consumer version under 90 grams. Guangli later narrowed its focus to sports wearables, and in September 2021 it opened global crowdfunding on Kickstarter for the first Holoswim swim goggles at an introductory price of 99 US dollars (599 yuan in mainland China). That first model offered a 25 degree field of view and 78 percent light transmittance and supported swimmers with up to 800 degrees of myopia through interchangeable lenses.

A second-generation product, Holoswim 2, launched on 2 August 2022, again through a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign reached about 36,500 US dollars against a goal of 6,350 US dollars, and the goggles shipped later that year. Guangli reported by 2021 that it had raised more than 100 million yuan in financing, with investors that have included Vertex Ventures (part of Singapore's Temasek), Linear Venture, and Ivy Capital. By the mid-2020s the company said its goggles were sold across more than a dozen countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Russia, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, and were carried in Decathlon stores in major Chinese cities.

Technology

Guangli's products are built around holographic optical waveguides paired with a small OLED display. A micro-display generates the image, and a thin transparent waveguide guides that light to the eye so the data appears to hover in front of the wearer while the real world stays visible behind it. The company markets this as a "transparent OLED holographic display" and pairs it with a resin-based optical module that aims for high light transmittance so the goggles still work as ordinary swim eyewear.

What distinguishes Guangli from companies that buy display modules off the shelf is that it develops the waveguide manufacturing process itself. The company says it has built its own holographic lithography machine and developed proprietary holographic photoresist materials, and it describes itself as having been, around 2021, the only company in the world able to mass-produce a pure-resin optical waveguide of this type. It frames this vertical integration, covering holographic simulation, photoresist materials, lithography, and production equipment, as the basis for its patent portfolio of more than 170 filings. Because the displays are tuned for a narrow set of glanceable metrics rather than full 3D scenes, Guangli's wearables stay light: the swim goggles weigh around 70 grams, far less than a general-purpose AR headset.

Products

Guangli's catalog has moved from a general-purpose AR concept toward focused sports wearables, with the Holoswim swim goggles as the flagship line and newer models aimed at other outdoor activities.

Product	Year	Type	Notable specs and notes
LIGHTIN 1	2019	Light-field AR glasses	First product; shown at CES Asia 2019; diffractive waveguide; developer version about 126 g, planned consumer version under 90 g
Holoswim	2021	AR smart swim goggles	First swim model; crowdfunded on Kickstarter from 99 US dollars; 25 degree field of view; 78 percent light transmittance; myopia lenses up to 800 degrees
Holoswim 2	2022	AR smart swim goggles	Launched 2 August 2022; transparent OLED holographic display; 25 degree FOV, 128x64 resolution; about 70 g; IPX8 water resistance; tracks distance, time, laps, pace, calories, and heart rate
Holoswim 2s / 2 Pro / 2 Go / 2 Young	2022 onward	AR smart swim goggles (variants)	Range of Holoswim 2 variants tracking up to roughly 10 to 12 swim metrics, including a youth model and higher-end versions
Holoswim 3	2025 onward	AR smart swim goggles	Latest swim model; about 70 g; 28 degree diagonal FOV; 64x128 portrait display; adds GPS route tracking and navigation for indoor and open-water swimming
Holotrek	2020s	Outdoor smart sports glasses	AR glasses aimed at land-based outdoor sports
SollaWave	2020s	AI music swim goggles	Music and AI swim-tracking wearable in the company's broader sports lineup

The company has said it plans to expand the same display platform into other sports, naming smart cycling sunglasses, ski goggles, and diving masks as future categories, and to work with traditional eyewear makers on distribution.

Market position and reception

Guangli competes in the small niche of augmented-reality swim eyewear, where the best-known rival is the Canadian brand FORM, with FINIS as another early entrant. Coverage of Holoswim 2 noted that it tried to undercut those competitors on price while offering a larger display area and smartphone notifications, features the reviewer said were absent from FORM and FINIS at the time. The original 99 US dollar Holoswim and the later Holoswim 2 around 89 US dollars positioned the goggles as a lower-cost option in the category.

Reviews of the goggles have been mixed. Reviewers have praised the novelty and usefulness of seeing live metrics underwater, the customizable fit from multiple nose bridges, and integration with fitness apps, while criticizing display brightness and visibility in some conditions, a relatively bulky feel compared with plain goggles, and connectivity or app-syncing issues. Battery life on the swim goggles is typically cited at around four hours of swimming per charge.