WayRay

WayRay
Information
Industry	Augmented reality, automotive head-up displays
Founded	2012
Founder	Vitaly Ponomarev
Headquarters	Zurich, Switzerland
Notable Personnel	Vitaly Ponomarev (founder and CEO), Philippe Monnier (managing director in 2023)
Products	Navion, Element, holographic AR head-up displays, Deep Reality Display, Holograktor (concept car)
Website	https://wayray.com

WayRay (Wayray AG) is a Swiss technology company, founded in 2012 by Vitaly Ponomarev, that developed holographic augmented reality head-up displays (HUDs) for cars and other vehicles. Its embedded displays projected a red-green-blue laser beam through a picture generating unit onto a holographic optical element (HOE) inside the windshield, placing navigation graphics and other information in the driver's view of the road with no eyewear or headgear required. The company was headquartered in Zurich and did much of its research and prototyping in Moscow.

WayRay raised money from Alibaba, Porsche, Hyundai Motor and other investors; in 2018 TechCrunch, citing a source close to the company, reported a valuation of US$500 million. It showed its displays in concept cars and at trade shows for several years, but according to the Russian startup newsletter The Edinorog it never began selling devices. A planned funding round fell through after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The company entered a court-supervised debt moratorium in January 2023, was declared bankrupt by a Zurich court on 14 August 2023 and was renamed Wayray AG in Liquidation.

Reviewed 4 October 2026. Founding, funding, partnerships, products, technology claims, 2023 insolvency filings and register status checked against the cited sources. About review dates.

History

Founding and first products

Ponomarev, who is from Russia, founded WayRay in 2012. Netzwoche, citing Swiss broadcaster RTS, reported that the company was founded in Lausanne; it later moved its headquarters to Zurich. According to GPS World, Ponomarev said the idea came from a car accident in 2012 that led him to see the windshield as a place to improve driver safety. In January 2016 GPS World described WayRay as a Swiss startup applying "aerospace technology to land navigation", with offices in Moscow and San Francisco.

In December 2015 WayRay announced two products for the United States market, both planned for release in 2016. Navion was a dashboard-mounted holographic navigation unit that projected route graphics into the driver's normal focal range, so that turn indicators appeared on the road ahead. Element was a smart tracker that plugged into a car's on-board diagnostics (OBD) connector and turned vehicle data into driver statistics. Neither product reached customers on schedule. In August 2017 Display Daily wrote that the two were "still just a product announcement with no way to buy actual products via the website".

Automotive partnerships and funding (2017-2018)

At CES 2017, HARMAN and WayRay announced a collaboration on a full-windshield head-up display proof of concept built on WayRay's HOE technology, to be combined with HARMAN's connected-car platform. WayRay's holographic display also appeared in the 2016 Rinspeed Oasis concept car.

In March 2017 Alibaba Group led an US$18 million Series B round in WayRay. As part of the deal, WayRay agreed to work with Banma Technologies, a joint venture between Alibaba and SAIC Motor, on an AR navigation and entertainment system for a vehicle planned for 2018. In November 2017 the company won the grand prize in the Top Ten Automotive Startups competition at the AutoMobility LA trade show of the Los Angeles Auto Show, chosen from 300 applicants. The award came with US$15,000 in prize money, US$40,000 worth of Microsoft Azure cloud storage and consulting services, and an Nvidia Drive PX 2 computer.

WayRay gave the aftermarket Navion its first public demonstration at CES 2018. TechCrunch's Darrell Etherington reported a two-color (red and green) overlay with an 8-degree field of view, with shipments planned for later that year. The company also introduced True AR SDK, a platform for third parties to build in-car AR apps, and said it was in talks with SAIC, Honda and other carmakers about building the display into windshields. Etherington wrote that the display was "clear and easy to read" and that its graphics looked more convincingly attached to the road than competing HUDs.

In September 2018 Porsche led WayRay's Series C round as strategic lead investor. The round totaled US$80 million (69 million euros), with Hyundai Motor, JVCKENWOOD and several funds also taking part; Alibaba was already a shareholder. Porsche said the collaboration was part of the Startup Autobahn innovation platform. Porsche said WayRay then employed more than 250 people, had offices in Russia, China and the United States, and planned a production site in Germany for 2019. TechCrunch, citing a source close to WayRay, reported a US$500 million valuation and listed China Merchants Capital and the Russian Direct Investment Fund among the other investors; it said the company had officially raised US$110 million in total. It also described an R&D and prototyping facility in Moscow and a sales office in Shanghai. Hyundai said it wanted the holographic AR navigation in its vehicles by 2020, with Hyundai Mobis and Hyundai MnSOFT joining the development work. Hyundai did not disclose the size of its own stake.

Full-color displays and concept cars (2020-2021)

At CES 2020, WayRay's fourth CES in a row, the company showed a full-color version of its holographic AR display. A blue laser had been added to the earlier design, completing an RGB light source. It also announced a strategic partnership with Covestro, whose Bayfol HX photopolymer line was already in commercial use, to develop holographic materials for windshields and side windows. A collaboration with Doosan Bobcat covered an add-on holographic HUD for compact construction equipment.

In July 2021 WayRay announced that its True AR HUD was used in Pininfarina's Teorema concept car. WayRay said the display was linked to the car's driver-assistance system, so drivers would see navigation and hazard warnings while passengers could get information about the surroundings and games. In September 2021, at IAA Mobility in Munich, the company introduced the Deep Reality Display. This next-generation True AR HUD could place different parts of the virtual image at different distances, from a near-field virtual instrument cluster to far-field AR content, and WayRay presented it as a replacement for the physical dashboard. Ponomarev said the technology would be "rolled out commercially and at scale by the beginning of 2023".

On 29 November 2021 WayRay unveiled the Holograktor, a three-seat electric concept car designed around its holographic displays and conceived for ride-hailing. Each occupant had several Deep Reality Display HUDs facing forward and to the side, and each seat had joysticks for games and interactive content. The car could be driven conventionally or remotely by a qualified driver over a 5G and satellite internet connection. In remote mode the steering wheel slid forward into a groove in the dashboard. Sasha Selipanov of RAW Design House was the chief designer. The single rear seat followed WayRay's view that more than 80 percent of Uber trips carried one passenger, and Ponomarev described rides that sponsored AR content would subsidize. In December 2021 Karma Automotive said it would put WayRay's True AR HUD into its engineering test fleet.

Insolvency and bankruptcy (2022-2023)

The Edinorog reported that WayRay was due to raise a US$100 million round when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The round fell through, and a 2022 pitch deck later seen by the outlet set out plans for a US$40 million round, then a larger round, and device sales starting in 2024. In January 2023 Blick reported that WayRay had entered a six-month composition moratorium (Nachlassstundung), a Swiss creditor-protection procedure, from 5 January 2023. The company was moving staff from Russia and Ukraine to Zurich and Barcelona and gave its headcount as 250 across Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine, China and the United States. Ponomarev told the paper: "We are not bankrupt, but in a creditor protection procedure."

On 4 July 2023 the composition court of the Zurich District Court extended the moratorium by three months, to 3 October 2023. On 14 August 2023 the same court opened bankruptcy proceedings against Wayray AG, which dissolved the company; it was renamed Wayray AG in Liquidation. Netzwoche, citing RTS and managing director Philippe Monnier, attributed the collapse to the company's Russian ties (its founder and some shareholders) and to the international sanctions that followed the invasion. It reported that WayRay had employed about 40 people in Zurich before the war and hoped a buyer would save jobs.

In December 2023 the bankruptcy administration announced that it had received a purchase offer for all of WayRay's assets: its know-how, patents, trademarks, vehicles and hardware for AR navigation systems. The highest bid at that point was CHF 4,300,000 including VAT, and creditors and third parties had until 20 December 2023 to submit higher offers, which had to exceed it by at least CHF 250,000.

After the bankruptcy

The Edinorog reported that in February 2024 Ponomarev announced that WayRay had come through a two-year crisis and restructuring and would continue with new shareholders. He promised details later but had not published them by May 2024. The outlet also reported that the company was recruiting a business development manager for China, and that the Russian WayRay entity, itself facing bankruptcy proceedings, had passed to a new sole owner in April 2024. As of October 2026 the Swiss commercial register still listed Wayray AG as in liquidation.

Technology

WayRay's embedded displays generated images by projecting an RGB laser beam through a picture generating unit (PGU) onto an HOE placed inside a transparent surface, usually the windshield or a side window. The company called the approach "Holographic True Augmented Reality". In the Deep Reality Display, a laser unit sent a red-green-blue beam through optical fiber to the PGU, and the "Holo-windshield" carried HOEs recorded on a custom photopolymer. WayRay put the system's volume at roughly three liters, against about 18 liters for a traditional HUD, and said that, unlike conventional HUDs, its optics could not be damaged by bright sunlight. The company designed its own lasers, including blue lasers used both as a light source and to record holographic film. It stated a virtual image distance ranging "from 0 m to infinity" and offered a dual-plane option for near-field and far-field content.

On the software side, WayRay's AR Rendering Engine combined sensor data, computer vision and maps to work out the vehicle's position and render virtual objects in real time. TechCrunch described the 2018 system as pairing simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) with location data, map data and a forward-facing camera, so that graphics stayed anchored to the road ahead. On its website WayRay described itself as "a leader in non-wearable augmented reality solutions for transportation and beyond".

Products and prototypes

Product	Type	First shown	Status
Navion	Aftermarket holographic AR navigation HUD	Announced December 2015; first public demonstration at CES 2018	Never sold, according to The Edinorog
Element	Diagnostics-port driving tracker	Announced December 2015	Not available to buy as of August 2017
True AR SDK	Developer platform for in-car AR apps	CES 2018	Demonstrated
Full-color holographic AR display	Embedded windshield HUD (RGB lasers)	CES 2020	Demonstrator
Add-on holographic AR HUD	HUD for construction equipment (with Doosan Bobcat)	CES 2020	Collaboration announced
Deep Reality Display	Multi-depth-plane holographic HUD	IAA Mobility, September 2021	Live demonstrations
Holograktor	Three-seat electric ride-hailing concept car	29 November 2021	Concept

See also

• Head-up display
• Holographic optical element
• Holographic display
• Holography
• Augmented reality