Introduction

On Tuesday, May 13th, the first day of the Display Week Expo, a couple of people asked me if I had heard of this new company, “Rivet,” which I hadn’t heard of up to that point. I asked around at Display Week, and a few other people knew something about them but couldn’t talk. I was able to confirm that several of the key people worked at Microsoft on HoloLens (several people at Rivet, including the CEO and CTO, worked on HoloLens at Microsoft).

It wasn’t until I got back home that I had time to do some more research about Rivet and, more importantly for this article, figure out what technology they were using. As it turns out, Rivet’s display and optics technology were hiding in plain sight on their website, Rivet.us. Consider it a hobby of mine to try to figure out what is inside AR glasses when the companies won’t say what they are using, as I discussed in my last article: Meta Hypernova and Google AR/AI Glasses – Lumus & Avegant Inside, Both Using LCOS MicroDisplays.

AWE on June 10-12, 2025 (Attending and Speaking)

For anyone wanting to meet me, I will be at AWE on June 10-12. I’m happy to meet with both companies and individuals. Please email me at meet@kgontech.com if you want to meet. I’m also going to be speaking on Thursday, June 12th, from 10:30 AM -10:55 AM in the Promenade Room 104 B.

Rivet Industries

Rivet Industries (hereafter Rivet) emerged from stealth mode just before Display Week 2025 and has created a bit of a buzz in the AR industry. According to PitchBook, Rivet raised $12.6M in its last round (there were probably prior rounds), but perhaps more importantly, Rivet appears to have some powerful connections (more on these connections later).

Rivet is aimed at Defense, Security, and Industrial applications. Still, most of the images on the website make it look like a direct competitor for the US Army’s $22B IVAS program that was first “won” by Microsoft’s HoloLens 2. It was widely known that the Army was dissatisfied with the HoloLens 2, which opened the door to other options before much of the IVAS money was paid out. In February 2025, it was announced that Andruil would take over Microsoft’s HoloLens contract, and the US Army approved this in April 2025.

I contacted Rivet with some of the pictures used in this article that proved that Lumus waveguides were in its AR glasses, and they responded nicely, but without answering the question about Lumus:

Rivet develops modular systems configured for the unique needs of defense and industrial tasks. We design, select, and integrate components to suit user and operational performance requirements. We will continue to release details and FAQs on our public website, www.rivet.us.

I have been told that the pictures on their website are of working devices.

Proof of Lumus Z-lens and Maximus Waveguides Used by Rivet

After returning from Display Week, I started looking through every picture on Rivets’ website. In most of the pictures, the glasses were so small that any detail was lost, and in others, the contrast or lighting made it impossible to see any details. I downloaded a few pictures that looked like they best showed glasses and looked blown up on my computer.

Rivet Glasses with Lumus Z-Lens

My first eureka moment happened with a picture (right) on Rivet’s contact page (still there as of this writing). On the lower right corner of the right lens (as you look at the pictures, the user’s left eye), I could see some faint lines indicative of the Lumus Z-Lens’s vertical pupil expansion reflective facets. I have been covering Lumus’s Z-Lens since CES and AR/VR/MR 2023, so I was very familiar with how it looks.

To help you see it better, I cropped the pictures above to just the glasses and then enlarged and enhanced (simple sharpened, lightened, and improved the contrast – no AI) in the picture below. I have also added a picture I took of the Z-lens at AWE 2024 out of the glasses for reference. That Z-Lens has push-pull prescription lenses (by AddOptics) glued directly (with no air gap) to the Z-Lens waveguide. You can see the Z-Lens vertical pupil expansion facets pointed at by the arrow. Most of the facets are covered by a black layer, but a few are visible at the bottom.

Knowing that I had found a Lumus Z-Lens in one picture, I started looking for evidence of it in other pictures and found the one on the right, shot from behind the waveguide. You can see the expansion facets (right at the arrow).

Lumus has shown Z-Lens waveguides that support up to a 50-degree FOV and typically use LCOS microdisplays. As I wrote last time in Meta Hypernova and Google AR/AI Glasses – Lumus & Avegant Inside, Both Using LCOS MicroDisplays, Lumus’ 30-degree FOV Z-lens with an LCOS microdisplay is suspected to be inside the rumored Meta Hypernova AR/AI Glasses. I would expect that the larger 50-degree Z-lens would be the Rivet. I should also note that Lumus has presented 70-degree Z-Lens waveguides in development that will also use relatively low-index glass, rather than higher-index glass used by diffractive waveguides or the more exotic Silicon Carbide, such as Meta’s Orion (see: Meta Orion AR Glasses (Pt. 1 Waveguides)).

Rivet Glasses with Lumus Maximus

Having found the Z-Lens in a couple of photos, I later went back to see if I could find more evidence. To my surprise, I was able to see the horizontal expansion facets indicative of a Lumus Maximus waveguide in the picture (right) on Rivet’s “Hard Spec” page (as of this writing).

Rivet’s website picture contains many distracting orange circles (perhaps by design to conceal the glasses). To make the Lumus Maximus waveguide more visible, I processed it in Photoshop to reduce the orange color and adjusted the brightness, contrast, and sharpening (no AI). I have additionally added a picture that I took when writing the 2021 article, Exclusive: Lumus Maximus 2K x 2K Per Eye, >3000 Nits, 50° FOV with Through-the-Optics Pictures for comparison. You may also notice that the engine on the side of the Rivet glasses looks to be similar to that of the Lumus Maximus.

Comparison of Rivet’s Z-Lens Based on Maximus-Based Glasses

The exterior frames of the Z-Lens and Maximus-based Rivet designs look very similar (see below). The picture with the orange circles is the only one I found on Rivet’s website that clearly uses the Lumus Maximus waveguide. However, this could be due to Rivet’s prototype development process and what was ready for pictures, and it is not indicative of what they will use in their product. I have no idea whether Rivet plans to use Maximus or Z-lens or both in their series of products.

Lumus Geometric Waveguides

Lumus, unlike most others, uses a geometric (also known as reflective) waveguide. In my experience, they offer much better color uniformity than the more common diffractive waveguides. They are also the most transparent, with about 90% transmissivity. Typically, Lumus engines are much brighter than their diffractive counterparts, with light output (to the eye) on the order of 1,000 to 3,000 nits. Lumus waveguides are inherently more optically efficient than diffractive waveguides, which contributes to the greater brightness.

Lumus’s Maximus, like the Z-Lens, uses glass with a lower index of refraction than typical diffractive waveguides. Unlike the Z-Lens, the Maximus waveguides require an air gap when used with push-pull and prescription lenses. My understanding is that the Maximus has better light throughput efficiency than the Z-Lens, but may be more expensive to make and requires an air gap when bonding other optics to it.

Originally, Lumus only had 1-D pupil expanding waveguides, which resulted in rather large optical engines. Lumus found its way into many military and a few industrial products. Lumus’s first geometric 2-D expanding waveguide was the Maximus, introduced in 2023, which enabled a much smaller LCOS optical engine. The Z-lens took this a step further with even smaller LCOS optical engines and the ability to bond other optics directly to the waveguide.

There are also several “clones” of Lumus’s geometric technology, mostly coming out of China. I have never seen any that look nearly as good in terms of uniformity as the Lumus models. Lumus also touts a very strong patent portfolio on its technology.

Teaser On Lumus Maximus with a Fantasically Tiny MicroLED Projector

At last week’s Display Week, Lumus demonstrated a very small projector using a Playnitride full-color MicroLED (using Quantum Dot color conversion) connected to their Maxmus waveguides. They also showed me that they have a working (but not publicly shown), what I can best describe as a fantastically tiny MicroLED projector—more on this, complete with pictures, in my next article.

Small World – Peter Thiel, Palantir Technologies, Anduril, Microsoft HoloLens, and IVAS Connections to Rivet

In searching the internet to learn more about Rivet, I stumbled across some interesting “connections.” In “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” terms, they are either one or, at most, two degrees of separation.

While Rivet was founded in 2024, it has some royal roots. Several of the founders and early employees came from Microsoft’s HoloLens IVAS program. Rivet’s founder and CEO, Dave Marra, was at Microsoft from 2013 to January 2023, and for five of those years, he was the Program Director for the HoloLens IVAS program. Mohit N. is the CTO of Rivet and was the Vice President Of Engineering, Augmented and Virtual Reality Core Technologies at Microsoft HoloLens.

Rivet CTO Marra left Microsoft in January 2023 and became the head of Mixed Reality at Palantir Technologies, a large data software company for military, government, and corporate use. Marra Founded Rivet in or about January 2024 while staying on at Palantir as a Strategic Advisor until January 2025 (according to his LinkedIn profile).

Significantly to the Rivet story, famous entrepreneur Peter Thiel is one of the founders and the current Chairman of Palantir. In 2014, Thiel convinced Trae Stephens to join Thiel’s VC firm, Founders Fund. Then, in 2017, with backing from Thiel’s Founders Fund, Stephens co-founded Aduril with former Oculus founder Palmer Luckey.

In addition to Rivet CEO Marra, two Palantir executives are listed by Bizapedia as directors of Rivet. One of those directors, Akash Jain, CTO and President, USG, Palantir, is quoted on Rivet’s website, “Working with Rivet, we are extending human skills with intelligent systems for precise, data-determined action anywhere.” Rivet also lists Palantir as one of their “Partners” and states, “Palantir is redefining workforce capabilities at the edge with AI-powered spatial intelligence.” The other “partner” listed on Rivet’s site is the defense contractor Northrop Grumman.

I don’t know if Rivet has any direct connection to Anduril, whether they are frenemies or perhaps may become partners. Still, several of the big-name players from Anduril and Rivet, at least, know each other. It is not clear whether Rivet is directly competing for future IVAS contracts. Anduril seems more focused on military and other government-related products, whereas Rivet says they are also going after industrial markets. Rivet claims to have a modular design that can be adapted for different markets.

There Is a Big Hole in the Enterprise/Industrial Market Left by HoloLens’s Exit

One thing I keep hearing is that multiple former HoloLens customers are looking for a next-generation product to fill the gap left by Microsoft’s abandonment of HoloLens in the Enterprise/industrial market. While the HoloLens 2 had horrible image quality, as this blog has documented, many companies found HoloLens 1 & 2 useful.

While widespread consumer adoption of augmented reality is still speculative, the value of AR in enterprise/industrial applications seems obvious. The “elevator speech” for the value proposition AR in enterprise applications is simple:

If AR can help a worker be just a few percent more productive, then even expensive AR glasses/headsets will pay for themselves within a few months. Combining AR headsets with cameras and AI, they can also detect any quality issues and give instantaneous feedback to improve quality.“

Enterprise headsets are not limited by the consumer market’s severe “look like ordinary glasses” and cost constraints of the consumer market. This enables the integration of more processing, wider FOVs, SLAM, and Multiple cameras.

In addition to Rivet, the Digilens Argo is another product I would put in this space. I have written about Argo several times, including here, and discussed it in a video with Brad Lynch here.

Conclusion

I believe there is a solid market for the type of products that Rivet is trying to address. While not the potential unit volume of smart glasses with displays, there is a much more solid business case that can be made for Rivet’s type of products. I was disappointed by what I thought were poor design choices taken by Microsoft HoloLens and Magic Leap in the past.

Lumus has been demonstrating Maximus (in 2021) and Z-Lens (in 2023) prototype glasses to me for many years. Their combination of image quality, transparency, efficiency, and support of wider FOV in glass has seemed to be a big advantage over diffractive waveguides. I have been waiting to see these Lumus 2-D expanding waveguides in products. With Rivet use and the rumors of Lumus being in Meta’s Hypernova, it looks like Lumus waveguides are may be finally making it to market in a big way.

Rivet, with some of its founders and early employees’ roots in Microsoft’s HoloLens, seems to be applying lessons learned from HoloLens. They are going with Lumus waveguides, which, as I demonstrated in Exclusive: Lumus Maximus 2K x 2K Per Eye, >3000 Nits, 50° FOV with Through-the-Optics Pictures, blows away the HoloLens 2 in image quality and resolution and with a similar FOV (see pictures below taken with the same camera and lens). Lumus’s 2021 Maximus was using a Compound Photonics 2K by 2K LCOS display. As was the first to report in January 2022 in Exclusive: Snap Buying Compound Photonics (LCOS and MicroLED), Snap bought compound photonics. Since then, Lumus has coupled its waveguides to Raontech’s LCOS devices (and perhaps others).

HoloLens 2 used a complex “butterfly” diffractive waveguide combined with a laser beam scanning projector (see HoloLens 2 Display Evaluation (Part 4: LBS Optics)). Microsoft likely spent hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars on R&D and manufacturing development on both the waveguide and LBS projector for a terrible (in terms of image quality) result, which left me shaking my head. The Rivet team seems to have learned from that mistake and is leveraging Lumus’s waveguides and LCOS displays.

As I wrote in my last article about Hypernova and Google XR, I don’t understand why the large companies in the AR space have spent so much on certain technologies in areas with a lot of competitive IP, such as diffractive waveguides, while overlooking the likes of Lumus and Avegant.