Secretive AR startup ODG raised $58 million to build its smartglasses

San Francisco-based company Osterhout Design Group announced on Thursday that it has raised $58 million in venture funding.

The company plans to use the money to continue to develop and expand its line of smartglasses, which overlay computer functions onto the world around the user.

ODG said that the Series A was led by 21st Century Fox, which first invested in the company earlier this year. Other investors include Shenzhen O-film Tech and Vanfund Urban Investment among other individual investors.

ODG COO Pete Jameson declined to comment on the valuation of the company but said that the round was oversubscribed. 

ODG was founded in 1999, and in its early years it primarily sold night-vision goggles and other equipment to the US military. It's taking the funding now because it is focusing on its new smartglasses platform, which could be a way to break into the consumer market. 

"We've been around for a while. We're not your typical startup," Jameson said. "We made a conscious decision to really make target strategic partners based on where we were in our development and growth phase."

"We're fundamentally a smartglass company today. That's where the opportunity is and it's very broad. B2B, industrial, commercial, all the way to the undeniable pull of the consumer market," Jameson said. 

ODG is notable as one of the few companies today that is demoing a full version of working smartglasses. It sells a device called R-7 Smartglasses that has its own complete operating system, Radical OS, built on top of Android.

As a company that makes AR hardware, it's in competition with some of the giants like Microsoft, which sells a similar but bulkier product called Hololens. Before Microsoft launched that product, TechCrunch reported that Microsoft tried to buy its intellectual property and other assets for $200 million, in a deal that apparently never was completed.

Take a look at ODG's technology for yourself: