Plural: € 30 million for the world’s first autofocus glasses from IXI

Espoo (Finland) — IXI, an Espoo-based startup deve­lo­ping the worl­d’s first auto­fo­cus eyewear, has raised €32.2 million in Series A funding to fina­lize product deve­lo­p­ment of IXI Adap­tive Eyewear and launch commer­cial operations.

The round was led by Plural, with parti­ci­pa­tion from Tesi, byFoun­ders, Heart­core, Eura­zeo, FOV Ventures, Tiny Super­com­pu­ter and exis­ting inves­tors Maki.vc, First Fellow, Amazon Alexa Fund , First­mi­nute Capi­tal, John Lind­fors, Illu­sian and Bragiel Brot­hers.

Niko Eiden, co-foun­­der and CEO of IXI, said: “Eyewear is the oldest garment in the world, rooted in centu­ries of science, design and craft­sman­ship. Yet it’s incre­di­ble that we haven’t seen more leaps in tech­no­logy, forcing milli­ons of people to compro­mise on the way they see the world. The time for change is now. We’re about to create a whole new era of tech­no­logy for vision — and we can’t wait to show the world what’s in store. Backed by inves­tors who reco­gnize the scale of this oppor­tu­nity, we are ready to rede­fine the possi­bi­li­ties of eyewear.”

Foun­ded in 2021 by a team from the fields of weara­ble tech­no­logy, optics and indus­trial design, IXI aims to disrupt the €175 billion eyewear market with dyna­mic lenses that auto­ma­ti­cally adapt to the wearer’s eyes. — The tech­no­logy offers a wider field of vision in a product that works exactly as nature inten­ded for the eyes”. 

The foun­ders of IXI, Niko Eiden (CEO) and Ville Miet­ti­nen (Chief Algo­rithm Offi­cer), were previously co-foun­­ders of the mixed reality hard­ware startup Varjo. Their expe­ri­ence with advan­ced optics and eye-track­ing solu­ti­ons inspi­red them to deve­lop a new type of eyewear that solves the chall­enge of vision correc­tion and addres­ses the chal­lenges of poor eyesight. 

Dyna­mic lens technology

IXI aims to create a new cate­gory of eyewear charac­te­ri­zed by real-time and ultra-low-power eye-track­ing and dyna­mic lens tech­no­logy. The company’s mission is to break the boun­da­ries of tradi­tio­nal eyewear, which IXI belie­ves have exis­ted for centu­ries. Accor­ding to the company, conven­tio­nal progres­sive lenses force wearers to compro­mise: Narrow fields of vision, peri­phe­ral distor­tion and diffi­culty seeing clearly at diffe­rent distances are common compromises. 

IXI belie­ves that as the worl­d’s popu­la­tion ages, the number of pres­by­opia diagno­ses will increase and milli­ons of people will face signi­fi­cant compro­mi­ses in multi­fo­cal vision, turning an alre­ady wide­spread chall­enge into a looming global problem.

Sten Tamkivi, Part­ner at Plural Plat­form (photo © Sten Tamkivi), said: “Niko, Ville and the team have a rare Euro­pean hard­ware exper­tise that puts them at the fore­front of advan­ced optics and eye-track­ing deve­lo­p­ments. They are deve­lo­ping a wonderful, lite­rally invi­si­ble tech­no­logy that will pioneer a new approach to vision and improve human vision once and for all. By support­ing IXI, we are not just inves­t­ing in a company, but in a future where tech­no­logy is revo­lu­tio­ni­zing the way we see the world. 

https://ixieyewear.com

https://pluralplatform.com