French startup Lynx hasn’t had an easy time of getting headsets out the door, much less funding its small hardware startup, which is dedicated to producing its R-1 mixed reality standalone. There seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel though, as Lynx CEO Stan Larroque announced that a batch of R-1 headsets should be shipping out soon.
Larroque details the plan to distribute an additional 400 units between July and August in a recent Kickstarter update, noting that the units were assembled earlier but were delayed due to financial issues with the assembler Compal.
While those issues have now been resolved and those headsets are set to ship, Larroque details what he calls an “excruciating” last 12 months, which he maintains isn’t related to the headset itself, but rather the tough fundraising environment for XR hardware in Europe.
“We were supposed to close a 30M€ deal at the end of April, term sheet signed and everything. And it didn’t happened [sic] because the European investor didn’t really have the money and lied to us. This was almost a death sentence, it’s the worst thing that can happen to a startup,” Larroque says.
Reeling from the admitted near death sentence, the company suffered another setback with a French public fund:
“Another one is a French public fund lying to us in their will to commit to our company. They took more than 6 months to do a due diligence, we spent hundreds of hours on the case with them (they were supposed to commit 15M€). They issued a [letter of intent] in July 2023. All that to realize they were badmouthing about us behind our backs to other potential co-investors. A VC shared those emails with me and it depressed me so much.”
Lynx announced some additional positive news. In the update, Larroque says the company is now collaborating with a “big financial US partner,” and remains optimistic about its product and roadmap, noting there is significant interest in defense, industrial, and medical sectors.
The company has attracted additional funding outside of R-1’s successful Kickstarter campaign from late 2021, which brought in $800,000 in crowd funds. In 2019, prior to the Kickstarter, Lynx secured a seed round of $2 million. According to data obtained by Crunchbase, its most recent Series A secured in 2022 from Somnium Space, bringing to the startup $4 million, making for a total of $6.8 million in funding to date.
Similar to Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro, Lynx R-1 provides mixed reality experiences thanks to its passthrough sensors and onboard Snapdragon XR2 chipset, although the company hopes to make it a more open and versatile device.