' first' autofocus glasses could spell the end of reading specs

While Mark Zuckerberg was hyping Meta’s latest Ray-Ban smartglasses and Apple was promoting its Vision Pro mixed reality headset in 2023, Finnish startup IXI was quietly crafting high-tech specs for more practical purposes. 

Founded in 2021, the company emerged from stealth in April with $36mn in funding to commercialise what it claims are the world’s first autofocus glasses. The prescription specs promise to change the way visually-impaired people see the world around them. 

“None of the tech giants are fixing eyesight,” Niko Eiden, IXI’s cofounder and CEO, told TNW in an interview. “They’re looking at smart eyewear as a new wearable platform for AI assistants or capturing footage for your social media feed, but not solving the actual vision problem.” 

Eiden is speaking from experience. He spent 14 years at Nokia developing imaging and augmented reality (AR) tech that laid the foundation for Microsoft’s HoloLens headset. After that, he co-founded Varjo, Europe’s mixed reality (XR) kingpin. 

IXI’s autofocus glasses are as slender as a regular frame. Credit: IXI

IXI’s glasses, however, don’t have fancy cameras, AI, or VR features. Instead, they use a low-power sensor that tracks your eye’s movements. By emitting light pulses and measuring the reflections that bounce back off your eye, the sensor can determine whether you are looking near, far, or somewhere in between. 

The glasses then send that information via electrical signals to the lenses, which are made up of a thin layer of liquid crystal sandwiched between two layers of plastic. When an electric field is applied to the glass, the liquid crystals change structure ever so slightly, which means they bend light differently. That allows the lens to autofocus on whatever you’re looking at, with a lag time of about 0.2 seconds.

“We’re trying to push the same step change that happened with cameras — from fixed focus to manual focus to auto focus,” said Eiden. 

With IXI, cofounder and CEO Niko Eiden is tackling his next big tech challenge. Credit: IXI

From static to dynamic

IXI’s autofocus glasses look to replace bifocal and progressive lenses. These glasses offer vision correction for multiple distances, such as reading and driving, all in a single lens. However, they have limited usable zones, with distortions at the edges and a narrow section for reading. This can make activities like walking down the stairs pretty awkward. 

Due to the autofocus capabilities, IXI says it can offer a full field of vision across the whole lens. And thanks to the low-power electronics, the tech doesn’t need much room — it can fit in the frame of a regular pair of specs. 

However, it’s still early days at the company. IXI is still very much in R&D and hasn’t yet set a launch date for its first product. The company also has to overcome technical challenges related to transparency, haziness, and full-day wearability to ensure the product matches or surpasses the optical clarity of traditional plastic glasses. It also has to meet the stringent medical requirements for prescription glasses. 

Nevertheless, Eiden is bullish on the tech’s potential to fill the gap between smart glasses being developed by tech giants and the traditional eyewear industry, which, he said, invests more in brand and design than optics. If IXI can disrupt that segment, it could be in for big gains. 

The global eyewear market reached $200bn in 2024. It’s growing by 8-9% each year and doesn’t show any signs of stopping. That’s because human eyesight is getting worse, a problem scientists have linked to excessive screen time combined with poor lighting conditions and inactive indoor lifestyles. 

It perhaps doesn’t come as a surprise, then, that IXI isn’t completely alone in this space. French startup Laclarée and Japan’s Elcyo are also working on autofocus glasses, although they haven’t released a product yet either.  

Armed with fresh funding, IXI is now planning to ramp up R&D, expand its team of 50 people, and move into a new headquarters with a purpose-built lab and clean room facilities. The company plans to hold the first live demos of its glasses later this year. 

“From the static lens to the dynamic lens… it’s a natural evolution,” said Eiden. “Whether it’s us or another company, somebody will crack it.”

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