Blink and you will miss it: a startup leaflet out of Finland is taking a new look in the market for iVier. Tapping in innovations in eye-tracking and liquid crystal lens technology, Ixi Building low-power glasses that will be invisible and automatically adjusted to the account for a wearer’s presbyopia (distant vision).
Four years in his life, the Helsinki-based IXI emerged secretly on Tuesday, announcing that he had raised a total of $ 36.5 million from a list of investors involving Amazon Alexa Funds to work towards his first commercial product.
London -based VC firm is leading the latest installment of Plural Series A funding, which has Tesi, byfounders, Heartcore, Eurazeo, Fov Ventures, Tiny Supercuputer and the involvement of existing investors. In addition to Amazon Alexa Fund, the previous investors of the startup include Maki.VC, First Fellow, Firstminuitacapital, John Lindforce, Ilsian (a family office of European founders similar to Iconiq in the US) and Bragial Brothers.
“Iewear is the last great border,” Nico Eden (CEO) said, who co-established the company with Chief Algorithm Officer Vile Meetinon. It is also potentially an attractive boundary: ixi quoted Estimate This increases the current market for more than $ 200 billion and at a rate of more than 8% Smartwatch And smart fone,
IXI (East called Pixieeray) has been established and staffed by a team, which originally worked on groundbreaking mobile technology in Nokia, which was eventually used in Hollance XR headgier in Microsoft (who had acquired a large part of Nokia). Later, co-founders started VarjoA mixed-coverage headset developer who targets the enterprise market and has raised more than $ 200 million in enterprise funding from investors such as Atomic, EQT and Foxconn.
VR and mixed reality, Eden, said, “Super interesting (…) continues, but it is a really difficult place because there is no market, and there are no volumes.”
Varjo said, a “great job” did a “great job” to detect the way of pilling industrial and enterprise applications.
But even chasing hardware in VR Space with big companies such as meta, Apple, Sony and Microsoft, it is still a conflict to find anything such as hockey stick growth for technology. There has been a steady growth in sales, but they are still in single-unknown billions, which seem big, but actually small for consumer electronics, is a disappointment for startups and hypersscaleer tech veterans who have invested millions of dollars in space. Apparently, Microsoft had closed Hollance in the last October, and there is no plan for a successor.
In IXI’s perspective, AR and VR discovery also leaves a lot on the table What It is being addressed in the field of iVier.
None of the previous efforts have seen closely (punishment!) How and if they can deal with the eyewear as a medical device, which are prescription glasses.
“It is not really that many people are actually trying to use technology to fix eye lights, and this is a good part for us,” Eden said.
In fact, you can play a game to check your email, post on Instagram, search for a restaurant, play cute creatures on the street to play the game, or get additional information to get additional information to buy shoes you seen on someone’s feet. It is just about looking and more clearly.
IXI has filed and applied for several patents around its invisible-smart iVier. Eiden and their COO JUSSI Havu refused to talk about a lot of nuances of glasses, but in short, it uses a very small tool manufactured in the frame to track your eyes and coincides with liquid crystal lenses that automatically adjust to help the wearer look into the focus.
Prices points, Howquu said, are still in flow because there is no product to sell yet. IXI has done some market research at the desire to pay, and currently the thinking is that they will not be priced like Bifocals (which you can buy in stores under $ 10), but like consumer electronics, first comparable with “a high end iPhone”. “Ultra luxury is still not a large -scale market,” he said.
The case of use, they say, make it easier for various segments of bad vision consumers: for those who need to have only a pair of glasses rather than carrying several goggles, to see the glasses closer and away; For those who already use verifoccles, but have been found to be clumsy to use and wear those progressive lenses; And, it seems, even for those who have opted for laser-i surgery to fix their vision in the past.
The initial adoption of the process decades ago, Eden said, now looking at the “boom back” of his laser surgery. Even when they can see long distances without glasses, they still need bifocals to read. Eigen knows with this first hand, he told me: he is one of those early adoptions.
For all of the above, the belief is that there will be a market of people who would like what they can see and how they can see without thinking about it.
IXI has estimated the battery life on its glasses that it is about two days. The lenses will be made with themselves nearby tips (to see things away), so even if the battery dies, when you say, driving, driving, you will still be able to see clearly. However, it seems that if you are reading and it comes out of the middle of the juice, you will be out of luck.
IXI “Autofocus” is not the only company pursuing the idea of ​​ievier, although already on the market that people who want to build ixi look much less comfortable than. LCOOut of Japan, and LacquelryIn France, both of them have imagined iwear that look like normal glasses, but users clearly provide autofocuses to see things, but have neither launched a product yet. Laclarée plans to release their first product in 2022, but its goalpost is now 2026 – a solution of how difficult it is to remove such ideas from the ground.
Another Japanese company, VixianAutofocus iwear is released, but its devices have physical objects that look like a small camera lens embedded in them.
The track records of IXI’s lineage and execution are two reasons that investors are eager to take a crack on the problem.
Eden said Amazon was in a hurry to partially invest in the product as he already knew Jeff Bezos from one of his previous companies. He did not disclose which company was, but he said that Amazon was discussed that he and his teams were working with the technology he had produced.
Finally, those talks never came to do anything, but it was designed to “yes” very quickly when it came to invest in ixi, he said.
The head of the Alexa Fund, Paul Bernard said, “RX is required to consider where it is needed, forcing it.”
He said, “Auto-tuning lens requires low-power/high-demonstrations, eye-tracking and algorithm adjustment for the liquid crystal lens at a very fast pace.
Amazon currently sells readers (for long-vision) on its market, but the company clearly (heh) looks at a future where it can do much.
In November 2024, it surfaced, for example, that e-commerce giants were working Special glasses for delivery drivers To help their destinations get parcels fast.
These delivery glasses, if they are launched at any time, will be more in the scope of the mixed eye. But if you focus your focus on Amazon’s growing business in areas like Pharmacy, then you can imagine an opportunity for the company to take advantage of the economy of the scale in iVier production that can address matters of corrective vision and AR/VR use.
Eiden and Havu said that the technique they are producing has already been proved in laboratories. “Later this year, you will have a chance to see the prototype,” Havu said. IXI refused to say that when it could be a product prepared for the market, which would require approval to be sold as glasses in addition to everything. “This is just the first step.”
Nevertheless, startups with patent and other work have done, IXI has sufficient ability that merges with investor interest around a very large occasion.
Stan Tamkivi, a partner of the plural, said in a statement, “Nico, Vile and team’s rare European hardware expertise puts them at the forefront of the development of advanced optics and eye trekking.” “They are producing beautiful, literally invisible technology that is a new approach to vision that will eventually improve human vision for once and all. By supporting IXI, we are not only investing in a company, but in future where there is a revolution in technology that we see the world.”
