Blink and you will miss it: A starting from Finland takes a new look at the market for prescription glasses. By pressing in innovations in eye monitoring technology and wet crystals ,,, Ixi It manufactures low -power glasses that will be adapted invisible and automatically to calculate the presbyopia of a carrier (distant vision).
Four years after his life, the Helsinki -based IXI emerged from Stealth on Tuesday, announcing that it has raised a total of $ 36.5 million from a list of investors including the Amazon Alexa Fund to work for its first commercial product.
The London -based VC company is leading the latest installment of funding in Series A, involving TESI, Byfounders, Heartcore, Eurazeo, Fov Ventures, Tiny Supercomputer and existing investors. Previous boot investors, in addition to the Amazon Fund Alexa, include Maki.vc, the first colleagues, firstminutecapital, John Lindfors, the Illusian (family office of European founders similar to IConiq in the US) and Bragiel Broters.
“Eyewear are the last big borders,” said Niko Eiden (CEO), who founded the company with an officer algorithm Ville Miettinen. It is also possible a lucrative border: reports IXI estimates who put on the current market for glasses in over $ 200 billion and increased by more than 8%, faster than smartwatches and smartphones.
IXI (formerly called Pixieray) was founded and staffed by a team that initially worked on innovative mobile technology in Nokia that was eventually used at Hololens in Microsoft (which had acquired much of Nokia). Later, co -founders started Varjo, a mixed -reality headset programmer aimed at business markets.
VR and mixed reality, Eiden said: “It is still extremely interesting […] But it is a very hard space to be inside because there is no market, and the volumes are not there. ”
Varjo, he added, did a “great job” to calculate how to rotate the specialized industrial and business applications. But even with large companies such as Meta, Apple, Sony and Microsoft, which seek the material in the VR space, it was a struggle to find a thriving market for technology-sales have increased, but they are still in mono-billions, small for electronic consumer. Saying, Microsoft interrupted Hololens last October and has no plans for successor.
In the IXI view, AR and VR aspirations also leave a lot on the table in terms of What treated in the area of glasses. None of the previous attempts have carefully examined how and if they can treat the glasses as a medical device, which is recipe glasses.
“There is really no that many are trying to use technology to really correct vision, and this is the kind of cool part for us,” Eiden said. You can’t use IXI glasses to check your email, post on Instagram, search for a restaurant, play a game that detects cute creatures on the street, or obtain additional information on where to buy the shoes you have found on someone’s feet. It’s just to see more clearly.
IXI has filed and applied for various patents around its invisible smart glasses. Eiden and Coo Jussi Havu refused to talk about too many glasses, but in a nutshell they use a very small device built into the box to watch your eyes and correspond to liquid crystal lenses that are automatically adjusted to help the user see the objects.
The case of use, they say, is to make it easier for consumers to have only one pair of glasses instead of carrying multiple pairs of glasses to look long and far, or closer. And for those who use varieties to have glasses that are easy and useful and not clumsy to wear.
IXI estimates that the battery life in its glasses is about two days. The lenses themselves will be manufactured with almost fan recipes (to see things away), so even if the battery dies while you are, let’s say, driving, you will be able to see clearly. However, it sounds like reading and running out of juice in the middle of the page, you will be lucky.
IXI is not the only company to seek the idea of ”automatic catering” glasses, though those already on the market look significantly less smoothly than IXI wants to build. Olivefrom Japan, and LacquerIn France, both Envision Eyewear that look like regular glasses, but provide automatic focus to allow users to see things clean, but they have not started a product. Laclarée had plans to release its first product in 2022, but its target is now in 2026 – a measure of how difficult it is to really get such ideas from the ground.
Another Japanese company, TowerIt has released automatic catering glasses, but its devices have natural objects that look like small camera lenses that are integrated into them.
The genealogy and the story of the execution of IXI are two reasons why investors are interested in seeing it getting a crack in the problem.
Eiden said Amazon rushed to invest in the product in part because he already knew Jeff Bezos from one of his previous companies. He did not reveal which company he was, but he said there were discussions about Amazon probably working with the technology he and his teams had built.
In the end, these conversations never came to anything, but he did a very fast “yes” when he came to invest in IXI, he said.
“The idea of bringing to custom vision correction to what is needed at RX Eyewear is imperative,” said Paul Bernard, who is head of the Alexa Fund, in TechCrunch by email, citing the lamentation of the current solution.
“Automatic regulation lenses require low power/high performance, eye monitoring and algorithmic regulation in very high speed lenses.
Amazon today sells readers (for long -term) on its market, but the company clearly sees a future where it can do much more.
In November 2024, for example, e -commerce giant was working Special glasses for delivery guides to help them get parcels to their destinations faster.
These delivery glasses, if they have ever started, would be more in the realm of mixed glasses. But if you shift your attention to the growing Amazon companies in areas such as the pharmacy, you can envision an opportunity for the company to use the economies of scale in the production of glasses that could deal with the cases of corrective vision and AR/VR.
Eiden and Havu have said that the technology they make has already been proven in the laboratories. “Later this year, you will have the opportunity to see the original,” Havu said. IXI refused to say when it could have a product ready for the purchase, which will need approvals to be sold as glasses other than anything else. “This is just the first step.”
Still, with patents and other work that has started, there are plenty of IXI opportunities that are worth the interest of investors around a great opportunity.
“Niko, Ville and the rare European material know -how of their team are at the forefront of advanced optics and eye surveillance developments,” said Sten Tamkivi, a plural associate. “They create beautiful, literally invisible technology that pioneered a new approach to the vision that will ultimately improve human vision once and for all, supporting the IXI, we not only invest in a company, but in a future where the technological revolution we see the world.”
