Nofio

Nofio
Information
Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Virtual Reality
Founded	2015 (as Immersive Robotics)
Founder	Daniel Fitzgerald
Headquarters	Brisbane, Australia
Notable Personnel	Daniel Fitzgerald (founder), Ash Kumar (CEO)
Products	Nofio wireless adapter for Valve Index
Parent	IMRnext (Immersive Robotics)
Website	https://nofio.co

nofio (stylized lowercase) is an Australian virtual reality hardware brand best known for a wireless adapter that converts the wired Valve Index headset into an untethered device. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brisbane company IMRnext, formerly Immersive Robotics, which has developed low-latency wireless video compression for Virtual Reality since the mid-2010s. The Nofio adapter streams the headset's display feed over Wi-Fi using a custom codec, and the product reached buyers through a 2022 Kickstarter campaign and a later retail launch.

History

The technology behind Nofio originates with Immersive Robotics, a startup founded in Brisbane, Australia in 2015 by Dr Daniel Fitzgerald. The company was started by people with backgrounds in the aerospace and robotics industries, who applied that experience to the problem of transmitting high-resolution VR video without a cable.

In 2017 the company demonstrated a wireless system aimed at the first generation of PC headsets such as the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. IMR said its proprietary compression algorithm could reduce VR video data by about 95 percent while adding only a few milliseconds of latency, and it pitched the system as an add-on that existing headset owners could buy rather than a feature built into one specific device.

The company later rebranded from Immersive Robotics to IMRnext and, under chief executive Ash Kumar, turned the long-running compression work into a finished consumer accessory. Nofio was set up as a fully owned subsidiary to bring that product to market. IMRnext is headquartered in Brisbane, with the company's offices located in the Fortitude Valley district of the city.

Kickstarter and release

Nofio announced the Valve Index adapter in mid-2022 and ran a Kickstarter campaign that drew strong early interest. The company has said the campaign sold out its initial allocation within hours, and reporting at the time put the 24-hour total at roughly 370,000 US dollars from about 900 backers, climbing past 845,000 Australian dollars (around 570,000 US dollars) from more than 1,300 backers by mid-September 2022 against a goal near 315,000 Australian dollars. The company later described the crowdfunding effort as raising approximately one million dollars in total.

After delays from the original early-2023 target, Nofio reopened pre-orders in 2023 and began shipping the adapter, which was also listed on the Steam storefront as a hardware product on 9 February 2024. The product has also been sold through third-party VR retailers such as Knoxlabs.

Technology

Nofio's adapter is built around what IMRnext describes as a network-aware codec, the result of the company's years of work on VR-specific video compression. Rather than reusing a standard video codec, the system uses adaptive compression whose ratio adjusts to changing network conditions, together with subframe streaming, a technique that lets part of a frame be compressed and transmitted before the next frame has finished rendering. IMRnext says this keeps added latency to less than a single frame period and delivers image quality close to a wired connection.

The kit ships as two parts: a base transmitter that plugs into the PC over DisplayPort, USB, and power, and a head unit that mounts to the headset and links to the Valve Index through a short OCuLink cable. The conversion is described as non-destructive and removable, and once a small USB driver is installed the adapter integrates with SteamVR without separate streaming software. Because the compression and decompression run on dedicated onboard hardware, the company says the PC's resources stay fully available for the game.

IMRnext has said the underlying streaming platform, which it markets as TIVRA, has applications well beyond gaming, including health, defence, mining, and manufacturing.

Products

Nofio's catalog centers on a single accessory built for the Valve Index. The adapter uses the 6 GHz band of Wi-Fi 6E and supports the headset's native refresh rates over a room-scale play area.

Product	Year	Type	Notable specs and notes
nofio wireless adapter for Valve Index	2022 (Kickstarter), 2023-2024 (retail)	Wireless VR adapter	Wi-Fi 6E on the 6 GHz band; supports 90 Hz and 120 Hz at the Index's full resolution (experimental 144 Hz); advertised 5 m by 5 m play area, tested to about 10 m; hot-swappable 30 Wh USB-C battery (about 200 g) rated around 2.5 to 3 hours, over 5 hours with two; head unit about 400 g (around 600 g with the battery fitted); connects via OCuLink to the headset; price about 399 to 449 US dollars

Reception

Coverage from XR outlets framed Nofio as a notable attempt to bring fully wireless VR to a headset that Valve never shipped an official wireless adapter for, and the strong crowdfunding response was widely reported. User reception of the shipped product has been more mixed. On Steam the adapter holds a "Mostly Negative" rating, with about 35 percent of 124 user reviews positive as of mid-2026; some buyers reported that the hardware worked after firmware updates and a replacement cable, while others cited setup difficulty and delivery concerns.