IXI raises $36.5M from Amazon and more to bring the concept of autofocus to prescription glasses

Blink and miss him: Startup Out of Finnish new views of prescription glasses. Influence in innovation in eye monitoring technology and liquid crystal lenses, Ixi It builds glasses of small forces that will be invisible, automatically adapted to the pre -duty (farsighted), for the user.

Four years in his life, IXI, headquartered in Hensinki, leaves Stealth today, announcing that he has raised a total of $ 36.5 million from the investors list, including Amazon Alex Fund to work on his first commercial product.

Plural, London VC based in London, is led by the latest tranks of the Financing of the Series A, with participation also from Tesa, by Founders, Heartcore, Eurazeo, FOV Ventures, Small Superbuilding and IXI existing investors. These previous investors, in addition to the Amazon Alex Fund, were Maki.vc, the first colleague, the Firstminutecapital, John Lindfors, Illusian (the Family Office of the European founders similar to the iconiqu in the United States) and brothers Bragiel.

“The glasses are the last big limit,” said Niko Eiden, an executive director who faced the company with the Villa Miettenian algorithm. It is also a potentially lucrative limit: IXI Cites assessment This has set the current market for glasses of a total of over $ 200 billion and grows at a rate of over 8%, faster than that of Smart watches and smartphones.

IXI founded and staffed a team of people who originally worked at a revolutionary mobile technology in Nokia, which eventually entered the Hololens in Microsoft (which at one point in his own mobile ambitions gained a large part of the gigantic mobile phone). Later, the co -founders founded and launched Varjo, a mixed reality developer who targets the company market.

Vr and mixed reality, Eiden said, “It’s still great interesting, … but it’s really a difficult space in it because there is no market, and there are no volumes.”

Varjo, he added, did a “great job” revealing how to turn to niche industrial and business applications. But even to large companies such as Meta, Apple, Sony and Microsoft, seeking hardware in GR, was a struggle to find a blooming market for technology, with sales growing, but still in a single -digit billion, small for consumer electronics. Significantly, Microsoft abolish Hololens was without plans for a heir in October last year.

In Ixi’s opinion, ar and the garden of the quest also leave a lot on the table in terms of what He addresses the glasses area, because none of them have yet looked so carefully how and whether he will fight glasses as a medical device, which is what is prescription glasses.

“In fact, many are trying to use technology to actually fix vision, which is a cool part for us,” Eiden said. There are no features on IXI glasses that can’t check your E -hits, post on Instagram, look for a restaurant, play a game that spotting a sweet creature on the street in front of you, or getting more information about where to buy shoes you have noticed on someone’s legs. Only see more clearly.

IXI has numerous patents submitted and reported for their invisibly smart glasses, and Eiden and his Coo Jussi Hawai have refused to talk about too many glass specificities, but, in maximum, a very small device built in focus to adapt to their eyes to be able to adjust to the fact that they can adapt to that they Your eyes are the fact that given that they will be adjusted to your eyes is that it will suit your eyes to be able to adapt to liquid crystal rites that will then be automated to be able to adapt to liquid crystal rites

The case of use, they say, facilitates the growing consumer population who are currently either carrying more pairs of glasses to watch far and more, or closer, that they must have only one pair; And for those currently using Varifocals to combine more needs for vision in one lens, that they actually have glasses that are simple and useful, not clumsy to wear.

It is estimated that the battery duration of about two days is estimated. The lenses will have almost visible recipes themselves (to see things far) embedded in them, so even if the battery dies if you are, in the middle of the ride, you will find nothing. However, it will sound like you are reading, and that runs out of the middle of the page, you are out of luck.

IXI is not the only company that follows the idea of ​​the “automatic focus” glasses, although those who have already hit the market are significantly less noishable than what IXI (which has been called Pixieray) wants to build. Eltio outside Japan and Light In France, both imagine glasses that look like normal glasses, but provide automatic focus to the user to see things clearly, but neither has been launched yet. (Laclarée planned to throw out his first product back in 2022, a measure that it was really ticklishly to remove these ideas from the field: his goal is now 2026) another Japanese company, ViksaHe has posted automatic focus glasses, but his devices have physical objects that look like small camera lenses built on them.

IXI -is a genera and record of the execution are two reasons why investors especially want to see the crack of bats.

Eiden said Amazon had partly invested in the product partly because he already knew Jeff Bezos when he was in one of his previous companies. He did not reveal what the company was, but he said there were discussions of Amazon who could work with the technology built by his and his teams.

Ultimately, these conversations never came to anything, but it did very quickly that when it came to investing in IXI, he said.

“The idea of ​​making vision correction at the request where it is needed in RX glasses is convincing,” Paul Bernard, who runs Alexa Fund, said Techcrunh through email, stating the clumsiness of current solutions.

“Automatic adjustments require an eye -track monitoring and an algorithmic adaptation of lenses with liquid crystal lenses with low performance. We think IXI team is well suitable for solving these problems with regard to their previous work in Varjo, where they worked to advance the SOTA in VR/XR technology, he added.

Amazon is currently selling readers (for longevity) in its market, but the company clearly sees (HE) a future where it works a lot more.

In November 2024, he appeared, for example, to work on Special drivers for delivery drivers to help them get packages faster at their destinations.

These delivery glasses, if ever triggering, would be more in the area of ​​mixed reality glasses, but if you divert your attention to the increasing Amazon business in areas like pharmacy, you can predict the opportunity to take the company of the proportion in the production of glasses that could solve the use of AR/VR.

Eiden and Hawaia said that the technology they build already proven in laboratories. “Later this year, you will have the opportunity to see the prototype,” Hawaiaah said. But Ixi refused to say when he could have a product ready for the market (which would need to be approval to sell as glasses, except for anything else). “This is just the first step.”

However, with the patents and other work he created, there is enough potential in IXI that deserves the interest of the investor around a very high opportunity.

“Niko, Villa and a rare European European hardware expert puts them on the forefront of advanced optics and developing eyes,” said Stenkivi, a plural partner, in a statement. “They create a beautiful, literally invisible technology that pioneering a new approach to a vision that will finally improve human vision once and for all. Supporting IXI, we are not only investing in the company, but in the future where technology revolutionizes how we see the world.”