Opal Camera is a digital hardware manufacturer focused on compact consumer cameras. Its flagship product, Tadpole, is a 1.25-inch square camera that clips to laptop screens and weighs roughly the same as an AA battery. Tadpole is designed for easy attachment to laptops for video capture. On August 8, 2024, the company announced a $60 million Series B financing. The round included investment from OpenAI. The article did not provide operating metrics or additional business details. Opal launched the C1 webcam two years ago after building a roughly 16,000-person waitlist. The C1 earned praise for hardware design and picture quality, with reviewers calling it a low-cost DSLR webcam alternative, but early software and customer‑communication issues emerged. The company rewrote 100% of its firmware, launched a new app called Composer, and stabilized its machine‑learning and computer‑vision systems. Opal has grown its headcount from four at launch to 16 full‑time employees and says it has improved quality and customer‑experience processes while remaining relatively lean. The startup says it has navigated supply‑chain challenges (its system uses the Movidius Myriad X for imaging) and plans a successor to the C1 as well as altogether new products. The company opened an SF office this past year and continues iterating on the C1 while building R&D and engineering capacity for future devices.

Total raised

$77M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Aug 2024