Halliday's DigiWindow hides a private display in ordinary glasses — record Kickstarter

When Halliday unveiled its first AI glasses at CES Unveiled in January 2025, the pitch was what the glasses did not have: no camera, no waveguide, no visible screen. The DigiWindow module from Gyges Labs sits in the upper right of the frame and projects a Micro LED image directly into the wearer's eye, so information appears as a 3.5-inch screen floating in the corner of their vision — invisible to everyone else, readable in bright sunlight, and compatible with prescription lenses.

The idea grew from a 2021–2022 partnership between Gyges Labs, a micro-optics startup founded by Stanford-trained engineers, and moody, China's largest color contact-lens brand, whose core team incubated Halliday. Instead of following camera-first rivals like Ray-Ban Meta or bulky waveguide headsets, the team chose normal-looking retro frames of about 35 grams, and made the private display plus a proactive AI assistant the whole product: live translation, meeting summaries, teleprompter notes, notifications and navigation, controlled by voice, frame touch, or a ring with a trackpad.

The positioning paid off. After the CES debut, Halliday launched on Kickstarter on January 22, 2025, and raised over $1.37 million within 72 hours — 6,861% above its target, at the time the largest crowdfunding campaign ever for AI/AR glasses. The 45-day campaign closed at $3.306 million from 8,023 backers, with early birds pledging $399 against a $489 retail price and shipping planned from April 2025.