IXI, a developer of autofocus eyewear technology, has raised $36.5 million in series A funding. The company plans to use the financing to complete product development of its IXI Adaptive Eyewear and kick off commercial operations. Founded in 2021 by a team of wearable technology, optics, and industrial design specialists, IXI is developing and producing dynamic lenses that automatically adapt to the wearer’s eyes. The company's technology uses real-time and ultralow-power eye tracking and state-of-the-art dynamic lens technology to replicate the natural focusing functionality of the human eye. According to a 2023 article posted by Amazon Science, IXI's technology combines a liquid crystal-based lens with eye tracking. Eye tracking is used to understand the distances to whatever the user is looking at, while liquid crystal technology changes the optical power of the glasses on the fly. Users calibrate their glasses to their eyes via the company's mobile app. The technology addresses traditional limitations in corrective eyewear, including compromises with progressive lenses, such as narrow fields of view, peripheral distortion, and difficulty seeing clearly at varying distances. "Traditional progressive lenses force wearers to compromise: narrow fields of view, peripheral distortion, and difficulty seeing clearly at varying distances are common trade-offs," the company said, in a press release. "As global populations age, presbyopia diagnoses increase and millions face significant compromises in multi-focal vision, turning an already widespread challenge into a looming global issue." The round was led by Plural, with participation from Tesi, byFounders, Heartcore, Eurazeo, FOV Ventures, Tiny Supercomputer and existing investors, including Maki.vc, First Fellow, Amazon Alexa Fund, firstminutecapital, John Lindfors, Illusian, and Bragiel Brothers.
