SCHOTT
More actions
| SCHOTT | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Industry | Specialty glass, glass-ceramics, optical components |
| Founded | 1884 in Jena, Germany |
| Founder | Otto Schott, Ernst Abbe, Carl Zeiss, Roderich Zeiss |
| Headquarters | Mainz, Germany |
| Notable Personnel | Torsten Derr (CEO until 31 October 2026), Stefan Brandl (CEO from 1 November 2026), Marcus Knöbel (CFO), Ruediger Sprengard (Senior Vice President Augmented Reality) |
| Products | Specialty glass, glass-ceramics, RealView high-index glass wafers, geometric reflective waveguides |
| Parent | Carl Zeiss Foundation (Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung) |
| Website | https://www.schott.com |
SCHOTT (SCHOTT AG) is a German manufacturer of specialty glass, glass-ceramics and polymers. It was founded in 1884 in Jena, is headquartered in Mainz and is owned by the Carl Zeiss Foundation.[1][2] In fiscal year 2024/25 the group reported sales of 2.83 billion euros and about 17,400 employees in more than 30 countries.[2]
In augmented reality, SCHOTT supplies high-refractive-index glass wafers for waveguide optics under the RealView brand, introduced in 2018, and manufactures geometric reflective waveguides designed by Lumus.[3][4] In September 2025 the company announced serial production of geometric reflective waveguides for consumer smart glasses and described itself as the first company to scale this waveguide type to serial production.[4] Press coverage and a teardown have linked that production to the waveguides in the Meta Ray-Ban Display, although Meta has not named its waveguide manufacturer in those reports.[5][6]
History
Founding in Jena
The company began in 1884 as the glass technology laboratory Schott & Genossen in Jena, Germany, which SCHOTT's English-language history calls the Schott & Associates Glass Technology Laboratory. SCHOTT names its founders as the glass chemist Otto Schott, the physicist Ernst Abbe and the optician Carl Zeiss; the Carl Zeiss Foundation's history also lists Carl Zeiss's son Roderich Zeiss. The laboratory was set up to develop and produce new types of specialty glass, and Schott's early work concentrated on optical glass for Zeiss's optical workshop.[1][7]
Abbe founded the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung (Carl Zeiss Foundation) on 19 May 1889. The first SCHOTT shares passed to the foundation in 1891 and the remainder followed in 1919. Abbe's foundation statute, which SCHOTT describes as its corporate constitution, took effect in 1896.[1][7] Continuous melting in large tanks from 1911 and automated production from 1923 turned the laboratory into an industrial company, and SCHOTT describes the purchase of the Zwiesel glassworks in 1927 as the origin of the SCHOTT Group.[1]
Move to Mainz and expansion
At the end of the Second World War in 1945, management and selected specialists, known in company history as the "41 Glassmakers", were taken from Jena to West Germany by American forces. The parent plant in Jena was expropriated in 1948, and a new main plant opened in Mainz in 1952.[1] International growth followed: a production site in Brazil in 1954, sales offices in New York (1963), Tokyo (1966) and Paris (1967), a first North American plant in Duryea, Pennsylvania (1969), and a first Asian production site in Penang, Malaysia (1975).[1]
After a reform of the foundation took effect on 1 July 2004, ZEISS and SCHOTT became legally independent stock corporations with the Carl Zeiss Foundation as sole shareholder.[1][7]
Leadership and recent results
Frank Heinricht became chief executive in 2013 and retired at the end of 2024. Torsten Derr, previously chief executive of SGL Carbon from 2020 to 2024, took over as CEO on 1 January 2025.[8] On 29 September 2026 SCHOTT announced that Derr would step down as CEO and leave the management board on 31 October 2026 for personal and family reasons, by mutual agreement. Stefan Brandl, a long-serving member of SCHOTT's supervisory board and chief executive of the Dräxlmaier Group since 2021, was appointed to succeed him from 1 November 2026.[9] For fiscal year 2024/25 SCHOTT reported stable sales of 2.83 billion euros, EBIT of 230 million euros (lower, which it attributed to external factors, cost pressures and an impairment loss in the Precision Materials and Home Appliances segments) and an equity ratio of 68 percent.[2] The same January 2026 release listed waveguides for AR smart glasses among its products, alongside mirror substrates for large telescopes and laser glass for nuclear fusion research.[2]
XR work
RealView high-index glass wafers
In a waveguide combiner, light from a microdisplay travels through a thin glass plate by total internal reflection. SCHOTT states that a higher refractive index allows a wider field of view.[10] SCHOTT introduced its RealView glass at SID 2018, the Society for Information Display's annual Display Week.[3] At launch the company said the wafers roughly doubled the total internal reflection angle of conventional glass wafers and were about ten times flatter, measured by total thickness variation. Laser Focus World reported that the raw glass was melted in Germany, with wafer manufacturing and optical coating in China, where SCHOTT had announced a joint venture with Zhejiang Crystal-Optech.[11] Optics & Photonics News reported SCHOTT's statement that the glass could reach refractive indices of 1.6 to 2.0, compared with about 1.5 for standard display glass, and the company's forecast of an initial market of 100,000 to 1 million devices a year in industrial and educational use.[12]
RealView won Display Component of the Year in the Society for Information Display's 2019 Display Industry Awards.[3] At Display Week in May 2019 SCHOTT presented a version with a refractive index of 1.9, which it said allowed a horizontal field of view of 53 degrees (65 degrees diagonal).[13]
In January 2020, at Photonics West, SCHOTT, Inkron, EV Group and WaveOptics showed what they called the first waveguides made on a glass substrate with a refractive index of 1.9 and a matching nanostructured polymer. Up to 24 diffractive waveguides were imprinted on a single 300 mm RealView 1.9 wafer using EV Group's nanoimprint lithography system, with WaveOptics supplying the waveguide design and Inkron the 1.9-index resin; the design supported a field of view of up to 65 degrees.[14] SCHOTT states that RealView wafers are used for diffractive and holographic waveguides and are available in diameters up to 300 mm.[10]
Partnership with Lumus
In July 2020 Lumus and SCHOTT announced a strategic partnership under which SCHOTT set up manufacturing for Lumus's Lightguide Optical Element (LOE), the reflective waveguide at the core of Lumus's products.[15] A later joint release dated the start of the partnership to early 2019. Its first phase set up a sampling line in Malaysia for prototypes, and a second phase built equipment and a processing platform for industrial manufacturing.[16]
On 30 January 2024 the two companies announced an expansion of the partnership. SCHOTT said it was manufacturing waveguides based on Lumus's Z-Lens reflective architecture and adding a production facility in Penang, a site it had run for more than 50 years with over 1,000 employees.[16]
Kulim plant and serial production
SCHOTT Glass Malaysia completed a new production facility in Kulim, Kedah, in September 2024. The Malaysian Investment Development Authority said it would create about 400 engineering and production jobs and named waveguides for AR among its optical components.[17][18]
On 29 September 2025 SCHOTT announced serial production of geometric reflective waveguides, which it said were co-created with Lumus. The release described an in-house chain covering optical glass production, ultra-flat wafer processing, optical vacuum coating and waveguide processing, and linked the step to the expansion of its facilities in Malaysia. Ruediger Sprengard, Senior Vice President Augmented Reality, said the step was "adding a crucial missing puzzle piece to the AR technology landscape."[4] In its January 2026 results release SCHOTT said serial production had been ramped up at Kulim and that the site, ramped up in 2025, was already running at its full target output.[2]
Meta Ray-Ban Display
The serial-production announcement came one day before the launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which uses a geometric reflective waveguide with a static 20 degree field of view. Road to VR wrote that SCHOTT was "almost certainly" the maker of its waveguides, while noting that Meta had not confirmed the supplier.[5] In its teardown, iFixit reached the same conclusion, calling it "almost certain" that the glasses use SCHOTT and Lumus waveguides.[6] In January 2026 heise online stated that SCHOTT, not Lumus, manufactures the waveguides for the glasses and described their production as complex and hard to scale.[19]
Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1884 | Schott & Genossen glass technology laboratory founded in Jena[1] |
| 1952 | New main plant opens in Mainz[1] |
| 1975 | First Asian production site opens in Penang, Malaysia[1] |
| 2004 | SCHOTT becomes an independent stock corporation owned by the Carl Zeiss Foundation[1] |
| 2018 | RealView high-index glass introduced at SID 2018[3] |
| May 2019 | RealView wins SID Display Component of the Year; RealView 1.9 presented[3][13] |
| January 2020 | 1.9-index diffractive waveguide demonstrator with Inkron, EV Group and WaveOptics[14] |
| July 2020 | Strategic partnership with Lumus announced[15] |
| January 2024 | Lumus partnership expanded; Z-Lens waveguide manufacturing[16] |
| September 2024 | Kulim, Malaysia production facility completed[17] |
| 29 September 2025 | Serial production of geometric reflective waveguides announced[4] |
| 29 September 2026 | Stefan Brandl named CEO from 1 November 2026, succeeding Torsten Derr[9] |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 "Corporate history". SCHOTT. https://www.schott.com/en-ca/about-us/company/history/corporate-history. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "SCHOTT revenues remain stable despite challenging market conditions". SCHOTT. 2026-01-20. https://www.schott.com/en-dk/news-and-media/media-releases/2026/schott-revenues-remain-stable-despite-challenging-market-conditions. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Matthew Brennesholtz (2019-05-13). "SID's 2019 Display Industry Awards". Display Daily. https://displaydaily.com/sid-s-2019-display-industry-awards/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "AR breakthrough: SCHOTT achieves serial production of geometric reflective waveguides". SCHOTT. 2025-09-29. https://www.schott.com/en-gr/news-and-media/media-releases/2025/schott-achieves-serial-production-of-reflective-waveguides. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Ben Lang (2025-09-30). "Meta Ray-Ban Display Waveguide Provider Says It's Poised for Wide Field-of-view Glasses". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/meta-ray-ban-display-waveguides-schott-lumus-wide-field-of-view/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Elizabeth Chamberlain (2025-10-08). "There's Groundbreaking Waveguide Tech Inside Meta's $800 AR Glasses But Don't Count on Fixing Them". iFixit. https://www.ifixit.com/News/113543/theres-groundbreaking-waveguide-tech-inside-metas-800-ar-glasses-but-dont-count-on-fixing-them. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "History". Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung. https://www.carl-zeiss-stiftung.de/en/foundation/history. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ "New leadership: Dr. Torsten Derr becomes SCHOTT's new CEO on January 1, 2025". SCHOTT. 2024-11-19. https://www.schott.com/en-in/news-and-media/media-releases/2024/dr-torsten-derr-becomes-schotts-new-ceo-on-january-1-2025. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Stefan Brandl appointed new CEO of SCHOTT - Dr. Torsten Derr to step down for personal reasons". SCHOTT. 2026-09-29. https://www.schott.com/en-gb/news-and-media/media-releases/2026/stefan-brandl-appointed-new-ceo-of-schott. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Waveguides for augmented reality". SCHOTT. https://www.schott.com/en-gb/expertise/applications/waveguides-for-augmented-reality. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ Gail Overton (2018-06-01). "SCHOTT high-index glass wafers improve augmented reality devices". Laser Focus World. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/optics/article/16571782/schott-high-index-glass-wafers-improve-augmented-reality-devices. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ Stewart Wills (2018-06-01). "AR Glass Targets Broader Field of View". Optics & Photonics News. Optica. https://www.optica-opn.org/news/RealView. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 "Schott next-gen glass wafers expand limit of field of view in AR/MR devices". DIGITIMES. 2019-05-21. https://digitimes.com/news/a20190521PR200.html?chid=9. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "SCHOTT, Inkron, EVG, and WaveOptics: Global AR leaders team up to enable next-gen waveguides at Photonics West". EV Group. 2020-01-29. https://www.evgroup.com/company/news/detail/schott-inkron-evg-and-waveoptics-global-ar-leaders-team-up-to-enable-next-gen-waveguides-at-photonics-west-1580308811. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Press Release: Reflective Waveguides for AR: Lumus and SCHOTT enter into Strategic Partnership". Lumus. 2020-07-02. https://lumus.com/blog/https-www-schott-com-en-gb-news-and-media-media-releases-2020-lumus-and-schott-enter-into-strategic-partnership. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 "Lumus and SCHOTT Strengthen Manufacturing Partnership to Meet the Growing Global Market Demand for Optical AR Glasses". SCHOTT. 2024-01-30. https://www.schott.com/en-ca/news-and-media/media-releases/2024/lumus-and-schott-strengthen-manufacturing-partnership. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 "SCHOTT celebrates completion of new production facility in Kulim, Malaysia, offering 400 jobs". Malaysian Investment Development Authority. 2024-09-30. https://www.mida.gov.my/media-release/schott-celebrates-completion-of-new-production-facility-in-kulim-malaysia-offering-400-jobs/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ Ben Lang (2024-09-26). "Precision Glass Maker Completes Major Factory Expansion in Anticipation of AR Glasses Demand". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/schott-ar-glasses-lenses-factory-malaysia/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ Tomislav Bezmalinović (2026-01-06). "AR Displays: Lumus presents 70-degree waveguide made of glass". heise online. https://heise.de/-11131867. Retrieved 2026-10-21.