Not my area, but the images in the Canon pages seem to depict the lenses as still being relatively thick overall, with several components doing the same job the

Not my area, but the images in the Canon pages seem to depict the lenses as still being relatively thick overall, with several components doing the same job they do in conventional lenses, but with the addition of thin layers with refractive structures to deal with chromatic aberrations, whereas Apai is saying they can do an 8.5m wide lens which is only 0.5cm thick. I don't know the field to say whether that's new, but it sounds different from at least the Canon examples.