Ask AI · How does Xu Chi, a top student at Zhejiang University, lead XREAL from scratch to go public?

On April 1, AR eyewear company XREAL officially submitted its listing prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, planning to list on the Main Board within the year. If successful, XREAL will become the first listed company in the AR eyewear segment.

“XREAL’s tenth year is a new beginning.” XREAL’s founder Xu Chi wrote this line in his Moments post. This serial entrepreneur, who graduated from Zhejiang University’s Zhuranchuiji College and holds a Ph.D. in electronic information engineering from the University of Minnesota, has previously worked at NVIDIA and Magic Leap (a U.S. AR technology company).

In 2017, Xu Chi returned to China to found XREAL (formerly Nreal). In just two years, he produced the world’s first consumer-grade AR glasses. This quickly drew attention from capital. According to Qichacha data, since its establishment, XREAL has received dozens of rounds of financing. Investors on the roster include well-known companies and institutions such as Alibaba, Kuaishou, NIO, Shunwei Capital, Sequoia China, and Hillhouse Capital, among others.

At this moment, as XREAL pushes to its IPO, it coincides with the golden window period when the AR eyewear industry is taking off.

IDC, a market research firm, predicts that in 2026 China’s AR eyewear market shipment volume will reach 4.51M units, a year-on-year surge of 77.7%. Even more noteworthy is that Chinese manufacturers, leveraging global expansion strategies and supply-chain advantages, will capture 45% of the global market share—jumping from technical followers to industry leaders.

But as XREAL pushes toward a listing, another question has also come to the surface. This unicorn that has “burned money” for nearly 2 billion yuan over three years—can it, on the eve of the AR eyewear boom, tell a profitability story that the capital markets will find convincing?

Revenue leads the way, yet it still posts losses

XREAL’s prospectus lays bare the double-sided reality of the global AR eyewear segment’s leading players: on one side, it leads comprehensively in revenue, gross margin, and market share; on the other, it has accumulated losses of 2 billion yuan over three years and is about to face severe tests of funding.

The prospectus shows that from 2023 to 2025, XREAL’s revenue was 390 million yuan, 394 million yuan, and 516 million yuan, respectively. From 2023 to 2025, XREAL’s year-on-year revenue growth reached 30.8%.

XREAL revenue situation, image source: XREAL prospectus

On gross margin, from 2023 to 2025, XREAL’s gross margin was 18.8%, 22.1%, and 35.2%, respectively. Over two years, gross margin increased by 16 percentage points—an effect largely attributable to XREAL’s shift toward higher-end products.

The prospectus shows that in 2025, XREAL sold 111.4k units of its high-end One-series AR glasses, with an average price of 3,196 yuan and generating revenue of 356 million yuan, making it the largest revenue source. Sales of the entry-level Air-series