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Smart contact lens startup Xpanceo announced earlier this month that it has raised $250 million in Series A funding, valuing the company at $1.35 billion.
In the coming years, the Dubai-based startup envisions contact lenses that could offer augmented reality, night vision, and zoom, health tracking through tear fluid, and other features.
“The initial idea was to merge all the screens you have into one limitless screen,” and to arm wearers with “new abilities,” said cofounder and managing partner Roman Axelrod, a 35-year-old serial entrepreneur. He said the company’s unicorn status is a sign it’s on the right path.
Physicist Valentyn Volkov also cofounded Xpanceo.
Hong Kong-based Opportunity Venture led the funding round, which also led Xpanceo’s $40 million seed round in 2023. The funds will go to product development and expanding the company’s team, which consists of about 100 employees.
Xpanceo has built 15 prototype lenses, including ones that can charge wirelessly and measure interocular pressure, or eye fluid pressure. It aims to combine these capabilities into one lens by early 2027 and begin seeking FDA approval.
After that, it plans to start on narrow business use cases, such as working with medical organizations on lenses that can measure interocular pressure. That’s because launching a first-generation product to the consumer market can be “suicide,” Axelrod said, nodding to Humane and Rabbit. Both AI wearables weathered negative reviews, and Humane’s device was discontinued.
Business customer projects could arrive as soon as 2028, and the lenses could be available to the public in the early 2030s, he said. In the future, lenses could be controlled by eye tracking, tongue movements, or voice control, the company said.
Xpanceo isn’t alone in attempting to solve the complexity of smart contact lenses. Google and Samsung began exploring the field roughly a decade ago.
Here’s a look at the pitch deck Xpanceo used to raise $250 million. One slide has been edited in order to share the deck publicly.
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