ENGO, a Grenoble-based startup developing smart, lightweight AR glasses with integrated displays for athletes, has raised €5.1 million in funding to strengthen its leadership in the sports smart eyewear market and expedite R&D on miniaturisation and innovation. The round was led by Ventech, Odyssée Venture, and Bpifrance Amorçage Industriel. Blueprint
Rahul Raj
ENGO, a Grenoble-based startup developing smart, lightweight AR glasses with integrated displays for athletes, has raised €5.1 million in funding to strengthen its leadership in the sports smart eyewear market and expedite R&D on miniaturisation and innovation.
The round was led by Ventech, Odyssée Venture, and Bpifrance Amorçage Industriel. Blueprint Partners has supported ENGO from its inception through to its fundraising.
Eric Marcellin-Dibon, CEO of ENGO, said, “Since ENGO’s inception, we have pursued a simple vision: enabling athletes to stay focused on their performance, not the technology. The lighter, more natural, and more intuitive our eyewear becomes, the closer we get to our goal: making the technology disappear in favour of the athletic experience.”
Founded by Éric Marcellin-Dibon and Fabrice Berger Duquene, ENGO designs smart eyewear that helps runners focus fully on their performance. Its parent company, MICROOLED, is a leading manufacturer of near-eye micro-displays and also develops and manufactures displays for scopes, night vision, viewfinders, and many other high-performance and mission-critical applications.
In 2023, MICROOLED announced a €21 million fundraising round led by Jolt Capital. It was first extended in November 2024 with the entry of Applied Ventures, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials. In October 2025, it announced that it raised an additional €8.5 million.
ENGO develops smart eyewear for runners, triathletes, cyclists, and endurance athletes. According to the company, while major US players in the sector limit themselves to smart frames without built-in displays, ENGO integrates an augmented reality Micro-OLED display that projects performance data directly into the athlete’s field of view in real time, without requiring the athlete to look away.
It highlights that the ENGO glasses are designed and assembled in France, and the frame weighs less than 40 grams and has up to 20 hours of battery life. The company has also created ActiveLook, the technology and app ecosystem powering ENGO glasses. The ActiveLook module is to be embedded in normal glasses and can be driven by any Bluetooth Low Energy-enabled device using the ActiveLook free and open API.
ENGO notes that the primary objective of this fundraising round is to support its commercial and industrial development in order to strengthen its presence in the global market for smart sports eyewear. Additionally, ENGO plans to expand its team by hiring 20 people in France for roles in marketing, business development, optical and mechanical engineering, and software and data engineering.
It also intends to accelerate innovation across its product range, expand partnerships with key players in the sports ecosystem, and strengthen its presence in international markets, where demand for high-performance connected equipment continues to grow. ENGO reports that it already generates 90% of its revenue outside France, with half coming from the United States.
This capital will also be deployed toward accelerating the French startup’s research and development efforts. It aims to step up its investment in ultra-miniaturised display technologies, the integration of new features, and the continuous reduction of its products’ weight.
Fabrice Berger Duquene, COO of ENGO, said, “This fundraising round gives us the means to accelerate our development and solidify our leadership position in the sports smart eyewear segment. We are seeing growing adoption of our solutions by athletes – both amateur and professional – and now aim to take the next step in our international expansion.”
