Lynx

Lynx
Information
Type	Private (SL PROCESS SAS)
Industry	Mixed Reality
Founded	2019
Founder	Stan Larroque
Headquarters	Paris, France
Notable Personnel	Stan Larroque (founder and CEO)
Products	Standalone mixed reality headsets
Website	https://www.lynx-r.com

Lynx (legal name SL PROCESS SAS, also referred to as Lynx Mixed Reality) is a French Mixed Reality hardware company based in Paris. It was founded in 2019 by Stan Larroque, who serves as the company's CEO, and is known for the Lynx-R1, a standalone headset that combines virtual reality with full color passthrough so the same device can run both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality applications. The company positions itself as an open alternative to the large platform holders, building an Android-based system that works offline and does not require a vendor account, with a stated emphasis on data privacy and European data protection rules.

Lynx has remained a small operation: around 14 to 15 people during the development of its first headset, working as designers, electronics engineers, and software specialists. Despite its size the company has been treated by the XR press as a notable independent challenger to far larger rivals such as Meta Quest Pro, Meta Quest 3, and Apple Vision Pro.

History

Lynx was founded in 2019 by Stan Larroque, who began the project as an engineering student before assembling a small team to build the hardware. The company first revealed the Lynx-R1 in early 2020 as a business-focused Mixed Reality headset priced at around 1,500 US dollars. Over the following year Lynx reworked the design for a wider audience, notably dropping eye tracking to reduce cost, and pivoted toward a consumer launch.

In October 2021 the company ran a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter that closed on November 10, 2021 with 725,281 euros (about 835,000 US dollars) pledged by 1,216 backers, more than doubling its initial 300,000 euro goal. The Kickstarter offered the standard headset from 500 US dollars, with a professional edition at 900 US dollars and a limited transparent-faceplate edition at 700 US dollars; first deliveries were targeted for April 2022.

On May 25, 2022 Lynx announced a 4 million US dollar Series A round led by the social VR company Somnium Space, whose founder Artur Sychov joined the Lynx board of directors. The round also drew earlier supporters and individual investors described as former Meta and Google engineers. At the time Larroque framed the company's ambition as creating "the European Champion of Mixed Reality," and counting the 2019 seed round of about 2 million US dollars, the Kickstarter, and the Series A, Lynx had raised roughly 6.8 million US dollars in total.

Production delays

The Lynx-R1 missed its April 2022 target and slipped repeatedly. Production validation units were built in December 2022, and mass production with contract manufacturer Compal began in August 2023, with the first backers receiving headsets at the end of 2023. By the time hardware shipped in volume, color passthrough rivals like the Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 3 had already reached the market at lower prices, raising questions in the press about whether the R1 had arrived too late.

Larroque was candid about the difficulties. In 2024 he told UploadVR that "the pace of production has been an absolute mess for the R1, and 100% of the constraints we had were related to financial issues," describing a roughly 30 million euro deal that collapsed when the investor turned out to lack the funds and a French public fund that spent months on due diligence before backing out. A batch of around 400 validation units assembled in early 2024 was held by Compal until a payment dispute was resolved, and by late August 2024 only about 500 units had been delivered against more than 1,000 Kickstarter backers and over 10,000 total orders.

Technology and philosophy

A central part of Lynx's identity is openness. The company builds its software on a modified version of Android with OpenXR support and markets it as a platform with no mandatory account, no integrated tracking, and the ability to run fully offline. Lynx states that its operating system is developed in France and designed to comply with European data protection law. Larroque has positioned this as a deliberate alternative to the major platform holders, arguing against building experiences that remain "in the hands of the same big players."

On the hardware side, the Lynx-R1 is built around the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 platform and uses an unusual optical design that Lynx calls a "four-fold catadioptric freeform prism," a square lens arrangement that requires a distinctive image warping pattern and gives the headset its flat, boxy look. The R1 pairs color passthrough cameras with Ultraleap optical hand tracking and a flip-up visor, and its successor moves to pancake lenses developed with the optics firm Hypervision to widen the field of view. The company has also released some of its own software publicly: in 2025 it open-sourced a 6DoF SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) tracking solution used for positional tracking.

Products

Product	Announced	Type	Notable specs and notes
Lynx-R1	2020 (revealed); 2021 (Kickstarter)	Standalone mixed reality headset	Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2, 6 GB RAM, 128 GB storage; dual 1600x1600 LCD at 90 Hz; 90-degree field of view; four-fold catadioptric freeform prism optics; color passthrough; Ultraleap hand tracking; modified Android with OpenXR; Kickstarter from 500 US dollars, later sold around 599 to 850 US dollars
Lynx-R2	2025 (announced)	Standalone mixed reality headset	Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2; dual 2.3K LCD panels; 126-degree horizontal and 103-degree vertical field of view; pancake optics co-developed with Hypervision; four monochrome tracking cameras, two RGB passthrough cameras and a depth sensor; about 550 grams; LynxOS based on open-source Android 14 with OpenXR 1.1; offline operation and GDPR focus

Reception and market position

Lynx has been covered consistently by the XR press as a rare independent hardware maker attempting to compete with much larger and better-funded companies. Outlets including Road to VR, UploadVR, and The Ghost Howls praised the Lynx-R1 concept, in particular its early commitment to color passthrough mixed reality and its openness, while also documenting the company's prolonged production and funding struggles. The headset's combination of standalone color passthrough and an open platform was repeatedly singled out as ambitious for a startup of its size.

The company's narrative also reflects the difficulty of building XR hardware outside the dominant ecosystems. By shipping the R1 only after Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 3 had already brought color passthrough to consumers at lower prices, Lynx faced direct questions about its timing and viability, even as it continued to develop the Lynx-R2 and pursue its goal of becoming a European mixed reality maker.