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Lynx

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Lynx
Information
Type Private (SL PROCESS SAS)
Industry Mixed Reality
Founded 2016 (SL Process); Lynx name adopted March 2018
Founder Stan Larroque
Headquarters Paris area, France (registered office in Boulogne-Billancourt)
Notable Personnel Stan Larroque (founder and CEO until 2026)
Products Standalone mixed reality headsets
Parent EssilorLuxottica (acquired 2026)
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 the Paris area. It was founded by Stan Larroque, who led it as chief executive until 2026, 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.[1][2] The company positioned 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.[3][4]

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.[4][5] 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.[6]

The company never shipped its second headset, the Lynx R2. A French court opened receivership proceedings against SL Process in January 2026 and converted them into judicial liquidation on 4 March 2026.[7][8] In July 2026 Larroque confirmed that the eyewear group EssilorLuxottica had acquired the company, including its intellectual property, assets and most of its team, while he left to join the drone maker Parrot.[9][10]

Reviewed 29 September 2026. Checked the new history, receivership, liquidation and EssilorLuxottica acquisition text, the infobox changes and the timeline against the BODACC notices, the founder's blog, Road to VR, UploadVR, heise online, Hackaday and lynx-r.com. About review dates.

History

Origins

Larroque has written that Lynx is the company he created "right out of school", after discovering virtual reality at the end of 2016 with an Oculus DK2 that his school had acquired.[11] In his account, the starting idea was a system to visualize Wi-Fi radio waves, built by strapping a camera to the faceplate of a DK2 and viewing the feed through the headset. The legal entity, SL Process, was a company he had set up during his studies to invoice consulting work; the prototype was codenamed "Para", and the Lynx name was adopted on 1 March 2018. Larroque says the name comes from the expression "to be lynx-eyed", which in French means having very good eyesight.[11]

France's official commercial register bulletin (BODACC) records SL Process as a simplified joint-stock company (SAS) whose activity began on 8 March 2016. It moved its registered office to Boulogne-Billancourt, west of Paris, in 2019, with Stanislas Larroque as president, and registered "Lynx Mixed Reality" as its trade name in early 2020.[12][13][14] Press coverage usually dates the company's founding to 2019, the year of its first seed round.[1][9]

Lynx-R1 and funding

The company first revealed the Lynx-R1 in February 2020 as a business-focused Mixed Reality headset priced at around 1,500 US dollars.[6] After that announcement, Lynx said, it heard from developers and consumers who wanted a mixed reality headset for the general public.[5] 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.[6]

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.[15] 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.[15] After the campaign Lynx took direct preorders for a Standard Edition at 600 US dollars and an Enterprise Edition at 1,100 US dollars.[15]

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.[1][16] 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.[1] Road to VR also reported that the company had expanded its Paris office to more than 200 square meters of research and development space and opened an office in Taiwan.[1]

Production delays

The Lynx-R1 missed its April 2022 target and slipped repeatedly: to "June-July 2022", then to the summer of 2022, and then to "between March and April" 2023.[6] Design validation test (DVT) units were built in December 2022, and in August 2023 Lynx announced that production had started at its contract manufacturer Compal.[6] According to Larroque, the first backers received headsets from the first batches at the end of 2023.[17] 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.[6] The price for new orders rose from the roughly 500 US dollars of the Kickstarter to 850 US dollars and later 1,300 US dollars as the company shifted its focus to business customers.[18]

Larroque was candid about the difficulties. In a mid-2024 Kickstarter update reported by UploadVR, he wrote 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." He described a 30 million euro deal, with a signed term sheet, that was due to close at the end of April but fell through because the European investor "didn't really have the money", and a French public fund that was expected to commit 15 million euros, spent more than six months on due diligence and issued a letter of intent in July 2023, but did not follow through.[17] A batch of 400 headsets from the 500-unit production validation (PVT) run, assembled in February and March 2024, was held by Compal until a payment dispute was resolved. UploadVR noted that even if the new schedule held, only about 500 of more than 1,000 Kickstarter backers and over 10,000 total orders would be fulfilled by the end of August 2024.[17] In the same update Larroque said the company still had more than 10,000 purchase orders for the R1, mainly for defense, industrial and medical uses.[17]

In January 2026 Larroque acknowledged in another Kickstarter update that R1 production had stopped two years earlier and that Lynx had delivered only a few hundred units. He promised that backers still waiting for an R1 would receive an R2 instead.[19]

Android XR and the Lynx-R2

When Google revealed its Android XR operating system in December 2024, it named Lynx, Sony and Xreal as companies building devices for the platform.[18] Lynx teased its next headset with a darkened image in October 2025 and said it would not crowdfund it.[20] The following month Lynx told UploadVR that Google had "terminated Lynx's agreement to use Android XR", calling it a "surprising turn of events". The company said it had worked closely with Google for a year on compatibility and remained open to running Android XR later. Google declined to comment on the Lynx agreement but confirmed it was still working with Xreal and Sony.[18][21]

Lynx unveiled the Lynx-R2 on 21 January 2026, running its own LynxOS instead of Android XR, and said it would be available to order "starting this summer" through its own portal and enterprise resellers.[22] Larroque had told UploadVR that the company had "learned so much with the R1" about electronics supply chains and would take no preorders for the new model.[18] In the announcement he said: "With the R1, we proved that a small, independent team could build a world-class mixed reality device."[22]

Receivership and liquidation

On 21 January 2026 the Tribunal des activités économiques (economic activities court) of Nanterre opened a judicial receivership (redressement judiciaire) for SL Process, setting 22 July 2024 as the date on which the company had ceased payments. On 4 March 2026 the court converted the case into a judicial liquidation and appointed a liquidator.[7][8] Road to VR and UploadVR reported the liquidation on 19 March 2026, after the notice appeared in BODACC and Lynx did not respond to requests for comment.[23][24] UploadVR explained that under French law a company in compulsory liquidation must cease operations while a court-appointed liquidator sells its intellectual property to repay creditors, and that the R2 would not launch unless another company bought that property and revived it.[24] Heise noted that the part played by the end of the Android XR partnership was unclear.[19]

Acquisition by EssilorLuxottica

On 16 July 2026, after rumors of the deal had circulated for several weeks, Road to VR and heise online reported that Larroque had confirmed the sale of Lynx to EssilorLuxottica. In a public email to backers he wrote that "all the IP, assets and most of the team is now transitioning from a startup to this big company, and it might take a few months for the operations to be smooth again, pending all legal approvals."[9][10] Larroque told Road to VR that it was a formal acquisition covering "the name, the domain, the databases, code, 3D files, manufacturing know-how", and that most of the team was already employed by EssilorLuxottica.[9] Financial terms were not disclosed, and heise reported that EssilorLuxottica itself had not yet confirmed the deal.[25][10]

Larroque, then 31, did not move to EssilorLuxottica. After eight years at Lynx he joined the Paris-based drone company Parrot in what he called "a key leadership role" alongside Parrot's founder and chief executive, Henri Seydoux.[9][10]

No plans for the Lynx-R2 were announced with the acquisition. Road to VR pointed to EssilorLuxottica's partnership with Meta on Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smart glasses as a reason the headset might have little future under its new owner, and UploadVR, noting that Meta owns about 3 percent of EssilorLuxottica, judged a revival "quite unlikely".[9][25] Heise suggested that the team's work on motion tracking and environment sensing was more likely to feed into EssilorLuxottica's research on AR glasses.[10] In September 2026 the lynx-r.com site still presented the R2 with a sign-up form for updates and carried no notice about the acquisition.[3]

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.[3][26][5] 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."[1] LynxOS is open source, Lynx headsets have an open bootloader, and buyers get raw access to the sensors through the Lynx API.[24][3] For the R2, Lynx also said it would publish the electronic schematics and mechanical design files, and designed the headset to be repaired with screws rather than glue.[22][26]

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.[2][27] 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.[2][26] Larroque has described Lynx as an investor in Hypervision.[17] Lynx based its optional 6DoF controllers on Finch Technologies' Shift hardware, which tracks with inertial sensors rather than cameras.[15][2] 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.[28] The release is Lynx's port of the ORB-SLAM3 code to Android devices with Qualcomm chipsets, with a demo application for the R1.[28]

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 and then 1,300 US dollars for new orders; in January 2026 Larroque said production had stopped two years earlier after a few hundred deliveries[15][6][4][18][19]
Lynx-R2 2026 (announced 21 January) 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; planned for summer 2026 but not released after the company's liquidation and acquisition[26][29][3][22][25]

Timeline

Date Event
8 March 2016 Start of activity of SL Process, the legal entity behind Lynx, per its registry record[12]
1 March 2018 The Lynx name is adopted, replacing the prototype codename "Para"[11]
February 2020 Lynx-R1 first announced as an enterprise headset at about 1,500 US dollars[6]
October to November 2021 Kickstarter campaign raises 725,281 euros from 1,216 backers[15]
25 May 2022 4 million US dollar Series A led by Somnium Space[1]
August 2023 Lynx announces R1 production has started at Compal[6]
End of 2023 First R1 headsets delivered to backers[17]
22 July 2024 Date of cessation of payments set later by the court[7]
December 2024 Google names Lynx as an Android XR hardware partner[18]
November 2025 Lynx says Google terminated its Android XR agreement[18]
21 January 2026 Lynx-R2 unveiled; the same day, the Nanterre court opens receivership proceedings[22][7]
4 March 2026 Proceedings converted into judicial liquidation[8]
July 2026 Larroque confirms the acquisition by EssilorLuxottica and leaves for Parrot[9][10]

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.[2][6][4] The headset's combination of standalone color passthrough and an open platform was repeatedly singled out as ambitious for a startup of its size.[1][4] UploadVR wrote that Lynx's commitment to open source and openness "saw widespread commendation from the industry".[24]

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.[6][17][1] Road to VR described the roughly 6 million US dollars Lynx raised as "a shoestring budget" for a hardware company, and UploadVR placed it on the list of failed XR hardware startups alongside StarVR and DecaGear before the EssilorLuxottica sale.[9][24] Heise observed that the acquisition at least kept the expertise built up over eight years in Europe.[10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 "Lynx Secures $4M in Series A Funding, Aims to Become "European Champion of Mixed Reality"". Road to VR. 2022-05-25. https://www.roadtovr.com/lynx-r1-4m-series-a-funding-somnium-space/. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "Hands-on with the Lynx R-1 Mixed Reality Headset". Road to VR. 2021-11-04. https://roadtovr.com/lynx-r-1-mixed-reality-headset-hands-on/. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Lynx R2 - The Ultimate Mixed Reality Headset". Lynx. https://www.lynx-r.com/. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 "AWE 2021: Hands-on Lynx-R1 mixed reality headset". The Ghost Howls. 2021-11-13. https://skarredghost.com/2021/11/13/hands-on-lynx-r1/. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Lynx R-1, the 100% French mixed reality headset". Laval Virtual. 2021-10-13. https://blog.laval-virtual.com/en/lynx-r-1-french-mixed-reality-standalone-headset/. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  6. ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 "Lynx-R1 Headset Enters Production, But Is It Too Late?". UploadVR. 2023-08-03. https://www.uploadvr.com/lynx-r1-mixed-reality-headset-finally/. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 "SL PROCESS - Jugement d'ouverture d'une procedure de redressement judiciaire (annonce 2864)". BODACC. Direction de l'information légale et administrative. 2026-01-31. https://www.bodacc.fr/pages/annonces-commerciales-detail/?q.id=id:A202600212864. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "SL PROCESS - Jugement de conversion en liquidation judiciaire (annonce 5370)". BODACC. Direction de l'information légale et administrative. 2026-03-13. https://www.bodacc.fr/pages/annonces-commerciales-detail/?q.id=id:A202600505370. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 Scott Hayden (2026-07-16). "EssilorLuxottica Acquires French XR Startup Lynx, Putting R2 Headset Release in Doubt". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/essilorluxottica-acquires-lynx-r2-headset-release/. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 "European expertise remains European: EssilorLuxottica takes over Lynx". heise online. 2026-07-16. https://www.heise.de/en/news/European-expertise-remains-European-EssilorLuxottica-takes-over-Lynx-11366421.html. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Stan Larroque. "Lynx". Stan Larroque's Blog. https://stan.sh/lynx/. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "SL PROCESS - Immatriculation (annonce 1230)". BODACC. Direction de l'information légale et administrative. 2018-02-25. https://www.bodacc.fr/pages/annonces-commerciales-detail/?q.id=id:A201800391230. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  13. ↑ "SL PROCESS - Immatriculation suite a transfert de siege (annonce 2371)". BODACC. Direction de l'information légale et administrative. 2019-05-14. https://www.bodacc.fr/pages/annonces-commerciales-detail/?q.id=id:A201900922371. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  14. ↑ "SL PROCESS - Modification du nom commercial (annonce 5531)". BODACC. Direction de l'information légale et administrative. 2020-02-06. https://www.bodacc.fr/pages/annonces-commerciales-detail/?q.id=id:B202000265531. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 "Lynx R-1 MR Headset Kickstarter Comes to an End with over $800,000". Road to VR. 2021-11-10. https://roadtovr.com/lynx-kickstarter-release-mixed-reality/. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  16. ↑ "Lynx Says $4 Million Investment 'Secures Our Supply Chain' Ahead Of R-1 Deliveries". UploadVR. 2022-05-26. https://www.uploadvr.com/lynx-4-million-r-1/. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 17.6 "Lynx-R1 Production Has Been "An Absolute Mess" - Founder". UploadVR. 2024-07-03. https://www.uploadvr.com/lynx-r1-production-an-absolute-mess/. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 18.5 18.6 "Lynx's New Headset Won't Run Android XR, But Will Have Widest Standalone FOV". UploadVR. 2025-11-14. https://www.uploadvr.com/lynxs-new-headset-wont-run-android-xr-but-will-have-widest-standalone-fov/. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 "European Meta Quest alternative facing closure: Lynx faces liquidation". heise online. 2026-03-23. https://www.heise.de/en/news/European-Meta-Quest-alternative-facing-closure-Lynx-faces-liquidation-11221765.html. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  20. ↑ "Lynx Teases New Headset - Will It Run Google's Android XR?". UploadVR. 2025-10-10. https://www.uploadvr.com/lynx-r2-teaser-image/. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  21. ↑ "No New Android XR Headset for Now: Google Announces Agreement with Lynx". heise online. 2025-11-19. https://www.heise.de/en/news/No-New-Android-XR-Headset-for-Now-Google-Announces-Agreement-with-Lynx-11084795.html. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 Scott Hayden (2026-01-21). "Lynx-R2 Headset Revealed With Surprisingly Wide Field-of-View in a Tiny Package". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/lynx-r2-headset-revealed-with-surprisingly-wide-field-of-view-in-a-tiny-package/. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  23. ↑ Scott Hayden (2026-03-19). "XR Startup Lynx Appears to Enter Liquidation Proceedings Ahead of R2 Headset Launch". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/lynx-liquidation-bankrupt-2026-r2-xr-headset/. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 David Heaney (2026-03-19). "Lynx Has Entered Liquidation, Meaning Its R2 Headset Won't Launch". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/lynx-has-entered-liquidation-r2-headset-wont-launch/. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 David Heaney (2026-09-13). "EssilorLuxottica Acquired Lynx After Liquidation, Leaving R2 Launch Unlikely". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/essilorluxottica-acquired-lynx-after-liquidation-leaving-r2-launch-unlikely/. Retrieved 2026-09-29.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 26.3 "Lynx-R2 XR headset: wide field of view, data protection, openness". heise online. 2026-01-21. https://www.heise.de/en/news/Lynx-R2-XR-headset-wide-field-of-view-data-protection-openness-11148950.html. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  27. ↑ "The lenses in the Lynx-R1 headset are like none we've ever seen before". TweakTown. https://www.tweaktown.com/news/76659/the-lenses-in-lynx-r1-headset-are-like-none-weve-ever-seen-before/index.html. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 "Lynx-R1 Headset Makers Release 6DoF SLAM Solution As Open Source". Hackaday. 2025-08-27. https://hackaday.com/2025/08/27/lynx-r1-headset-makers-release-6dof-slam-solution-as-open-source/. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
  29. ↑ "Lynx-R2 Has 126° Field Of View Via Aspheric Pancake Lenses". UploadVR. 2026-01-28. https://www.uploadvr.com/lynx-r2-standalone-specs-announced/. Retrieved June 14, 2026.
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