Plus blinks and you’ll miss it: Starting out of Finland is taking a new look at the market for prescription iPare. Eye tracking and tapping into innovations in liquid crystal lens technology, ixi The wearer’s LOW, low -strength glasses that will automatically adjust to the account for the Presbopia (Distance).
Four years after his life, Ixi, based in Hanki, is emerging from stealth today, announcing that he has collected a total of 36.5 million from the list of investors, including the Amazon Alexa Fund, to work towards his first commercial product.
Often, London -based Vice -Chancellor, leading the latest destination of the Series A Fund, which also participates in TC, Bio Founders, Harticore, Urozo, FOV Ventures, Small Super Computer and IXI investors. He was a previous investor, in addition to the Amazon Alexa Fund, Maki.VC, First Fellow, First Manoute Capital, John Lund Force, Illinois (Family Office of European Founders similar to iconic in the United States) and Brigal Brothers.
“Eyewear is the last great border,” said Nico Eidan, CEO, who co -founded the company with Chief Algorithm Officer Will Mattenon. This is also a profit -fronted too: IXI refers to Estimated It increases the current market for overall iWare more than $ 200 billion and more than 8 %, which is faster than Clever watches And Smartphones.
The IXI is founded by a team of people who actually worked on ground breaking mobile technology in Nokia, which eventually enrolled in the Holocales in Microsoft (who received a large part of the mobile phone giant at one point in his mobile ambitions). Later, the founders founded and operated the headset developer of mixed realism, targeting the enterprise market.
VR and mixed reality, Eidan said, “Very interesting, … but this is a really difficult place because there is no market, and there are no volumes.”
He added that Verju did a “great job” to find out how to discard the niche of industrial and enterprise applications. But even with large companies like Meta, Apple, Sony and Microsoft, pursuing hardware in VRSPace, this technology has been a struggle to find the market at the height, which increases sales but still in the billion category of single digits, which is small for consumers’ electronics. Clearly, Microsoft Bank In October last year, there is no plan for his successor’s successor.
Ixi’s view, pursuing AR and VR also leave a lot on the table What The Chashma Kasha area is being addressed, because none of them have yet to look closely at how and how to deal with the iWare as a medical device, which is prescription glasses.
Eidan said, “There are not really many people who are actually trying to use technology to fix eye light, and this is a cool part for us.” There are no features to check your email in Ixi glasses, post on Instagram, find a restaurant, see beautiful creatures on the road in front of you, or get additional information to buy shoes on someone’s feet. It’s just about to look more clearly.
Ixi has a lot of patents filed and they have been applied around the smart eyewear, and Eidan and his COO Josi Hao refused to talk about many of the glass features, but briefly. That is used to track your eyes a very small device and then connect with the liquid crystal lens.
They say the issue of use is to make it easier for the growing population of consumers who currently carry either one pairs of glasses for remote, or, closer, only requires a pair. And for those who are currently using the reviews to connect many vision requirements to a lens, in fact, to keep glasses that are easy and useful to wear, rather than clumsy.
Battery life is estimated at about two days. The lenses will have nearby prescriptions themselves (to see very far -reaching things), so even if there is a battery death, if you are, somewhere, in the middle of driving, you will not be able to see yourself anything. However, it seems that if you are reading and the mid -page ends, you are out of your destiny.
Ixi is not the only company that gains the idea of ”auto -focus” spectacle, though people who have already hit the market look significantly less smooth than IXI (known as Pixari). Elsio Out of Japan and laclarée In France, both iVares that look like ordinary glasses, but provide auto -focuses to the user to clearly see things, but neither has yet to launch any product. (Lockery intended to return his first product in 2022, a measure of how difficult it is to remove these ideas from the ground: his round post is now 2026.) Another Japanese company, VixionAuto -Focus Eyewear has been released, but its devices have physical objects that look like a small camera lens embedded on them.
There are two reasons for the IXI prescription and execution track record, which causes investors to look, especially the batting crack.
Eidan said Amazon was partly in investing in this product because he already knew Jeff Bezos when he was one of his former companies. He did not disclose which company he was, but he said that Amazon was being discussed who were probably working with the technology he and his teams were built.
He said, “Finally, this conversation has never come to anything, but when it comes to investing in Ixi, it soon suffered.”
Paul Bernard, head of the Alexa Fund, cited the current solutions, “Paul Bernard, head of the Alexa Fund, told the Tech Crunch on the email,” The reform of on -demand vision is forced to be forced to be in RXIware. ” “
He added, “Auto -toning lenses need less power/high -performance eye tracking and algorithmic adjustments. We think the IXI team is suitable for dealing with these issues in view of their previous work in Verju, where they worked on VR/XR Technology.”
Amazon currently sells readers (for a long look) in its market, but the company clearly sees a future where it is doing a lot.
In November 2024, for example, it emerged that it was working Special glasses for delivery drivers To help them get the parcel faster in their places.
These delivery glasses, if they ever launch, will be more within the sphere of mixed reality, but if you draw your attention to the growing business of Amazon in areas like pharmacy, you may imagine the opportunity for the company to take advantage of the economy of the spectacle and to solve the issues.
Eidan and Hao said that the technology they are developing has already proved in the labs. “You will have the opportunity to see the prototype later this year,” Ho said. But Ixi refused to say when it could produce a product ready for the market (which would require approval to sell as a glass, besides everything). “This is just the first step.”
Yet with patents and other tasks he created, Ixi has a lot of ability, which is capable of investors’ interest around a great opportunity.
“Nico, Valley and the team’s rare European hardware skills put them at the forefront of modern optics and eye tracking progress,” said Stan Tamkawi, a majority, in a statement. “They are creating a beautiful, literally invisible technology that offers a new approach to vision that will eventually improve human eyes once and for all. By supporting IXI, we are not only investing in a company, but in a future where technology revolutionize how we see the world.”