WSJ: OpenAI buying Glass Imaging smartphone camera tech startup
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The Wall Street Journal reports OpenAI has purchased Glass Imaging, a startup developing technology to develop high-quality cameras in smartphones. The report said the deal valued Glass Imaging at $300 million; last year, a Series A funding round last year valued the company at $100 million. Glass Imaging, is developing technology that uses artificial intelligence to produce image quality on par with a DSLR camera.
In 2025, Glass Imaging won the Best Technology Award at Visual 1st. Judge Rudy Burger, founder and managing partner at Woodside Capital, noted: “Glass Imaging’s neural ISP technology has the potential to empower hundreds of millions of consumers and imaging professionals to take better still images and video and will also enable smartphone vendors to improve the image quality of their camera systems while potentially reducing costs. It’s great to see that technology now also being applied to live video.”
In May, 2025, Glass Imaging unveiled a Series A funding round led by global software investor Insight Partners. The $20 million round was joined by previous Glass Imaging investors GV (Google Ventures), Future Ventures and Abstract Ventures.
Glass Imaging uses artificial intelligence to extract the full image quality potential on current and future cameras by reversing lens aberrations and sensor imperfections. Glass works with manufacturers to integrate GlassAI software to boost camera performance 10x resulting in sharper, more detailed images under various conditions that remain true to life with no hallucinations or optical distortions.
“GlassAI leverages edge AI to transform Raw burst image data from any camera into stunning, high-fidelity visuals,” said Tom Bishop, Ph.D., founder and CTO, Glass Imaging. “Our advanced image restoration networks go beyond what is possible on other solutions: swiftly correcting optical aberrations and sensor imperfections while efficiently reducing noise, delivering fine texture and real image content recovery that outperforms traditional ISP pipelines.”
