Mojo Vision announced it has raised more than $51 million in a Series B-1 investment round, something the company says will be used for further development on Mojo Lens, its smart contact lens.

The company’s latest funding round was led by New Enterprise Associates, and includes participation by Gradient Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Liberty Global Ventures, Struck Capital, Dolby Family Ventures, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, Fusion Fund, Intellectus Partners, KDDI Open Innovation Fund, Numbase Group, InFocus Capital Partners, and others.

Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, PhD, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, will join Mojo Vision’s board of directors.

The latest funding round brings Mojo Vision’s total funding to more than $159 million, with its penultimate round to date netting the company $58 million in March 2019.

SEE ALSO
Mojo is Making Contacts Smarter with Its Incredibly Tiny Microdisplay

Back at CES 2020 in January, Mojo announced that it was building its smart contact lens with built-in display, Mojo Lens. Although the company admitted then that it was still years away from commercialization for consumers, Mojo is first planning to use its contacts for the visually impaired. Applications include real-time contrast and scene enhancement, something the company says will make navigation, obstacle avoidance, and personal interactions easier for the visually impaired.

“The unveiling of the details of our product development earlier this year has generated increased excitement and momentum around the potential of Mojo Lens,” said Mojo Vision CEO and co-founder Drew Perkins. “This new round of funding brings more support and capital from strategic investors and companies to help us continue our breakthrough technology development. It gets us closer to bringing the benefits of Mojo Lens to people with vision impairments, to enterprises and eventually, consumers.”

The smart contact lens is still in development, however Fast Company reported in January that Mojo Lens squeezes 70,000 pixels into less than half a millimeter, a green monochrome microLED served up directly to the eye’s fovea. Although it’s not an augmented reality system as such, the company seems to be making serious inroads to creating a truly wearable heads-up display (HUD), similar to Google Glass in function as opposed to an AR headset such as Microsoft’s HoloLens.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • VRagoso

    Incredible how much money is there for dreams selling. Imagine the future if this picks up.

  • KennethX78

    How on earth is this ever going to work when the contact lens is moving along with your eyeball? Think about that for a moment.

    • kalqlate

      I would do it as follows: 9-DoF IMU in the control silicon outside of the area of the pupil tracks all eye movement and communicates this and other information wirelessly via onboard WiFi or Bluetooth to the companion contact in the other eye and a belt, necklace or over the ear controller. With that information, various pieces of information displayed in both contacts can be maintained in desired virtual position in stereoscopic X/Y and depth with proper offsetting to compensate for all motion. The varying distance measured between the two pupils determines the focal plane in focus and blurs the others, all to match how focus and blurring is happening in the real world.

    • KinkyJalepeno

      The displayed image is not anchored to the position on the lens, it’s anchored to the real world object the same as AR – A big “this shop is having a sale” banner above the door of the shop wold be fixed there, look away and the banner stays put over the shop.

      Follow your own advice, think about it for a minute.

    • kontis

      Obviously it has to be tracked.

      On the other hand it magically solves the foveated rendering and transfer. Human vision is often estimated at ~600 MPIX, but human eye is only around 8 MPIX (similar amount of pixels that a 4K screen has).

  • I’m not a believer of AR contact lenses (too difficult, too risky), but I’m glad they got the money so we can see what they will come up with

    • Gabrielle

      I always profit nearly 6,000-8,000 US dollars each and every 4 weeks through the internet. It is ideal to doubtlessly replace my earlier tasks earnings, particularly taking into account I only do the work about 20 hour a week at home. I have obviate my occupation after doing work for only one corporation for several years, I required very reliable income. I was not analyzing for any make money programs that promises to make you cash rich mere a few days that you find all around the web. The most thrilling part of carrying out work on the web is that I’m always home with all the kiddies and also enjoy a lot freetime with my loved ones on many beautiful shores of the beautiful countries. Honestly,it is actually simpler than you would believe, all you need to do is submit a very simple form to receive front line access to the Home Profit System. The directions have been in very straightforward language, you dont need to become a computer professional, but you should have skills to make use of internet. It is as simple as being on Instagram. Here’s the best method to start => urldb.io/0F

  • Dan

    $51 million flushed down the toilet. I’d rather they invest that money into making an affordable full human FOV VR headset with 4K or greater resolution.

    • kontis

      Those who invested in this are not interested in bulky gaming gadgets for geeks.

  • Jonathan Winters III

    Only problem is….if it goes haywire/glitches out, it could easily blind someone or cause permanent vision damage.

  • Trenix

    They can’t pull this off with a pair of glasses, but they attempt it with a pair contact lenses. It surprises me how someone has the money to invest into something bound to fail and never reach the time of day, pretty much within the next century. Capitalism is clearly not working as intended.