NuEyes

NuEyes
Information
Type	Private
Industry	Augmented Reality, Assistive technology
Founded	2016
Founder	Mark Greget
Headquarters	Newport Beach, California, United States
Notable Personnel	Mark Greget (CEO), Andrew Fanous (Chief Medical Officer)
Products	Low vision smart glasses and headsets, enterprise and medical wearables
Website	https://www.nueyes.com

NuEyes (NuEyes Technologies, Inc.) is an American Augmented Reality and assistive technology company that develops wearable smart glasses and headsets aimed primarily at people with low vision. The company was founded in January 2016 by Mark Greget, a United States Navy veteran, and is headquartered in Newport Beach, in Orange County, California. Its devices use a head-worn camera and displays to magnify and enhance what the wearer is looking at, with adjustable magnification, contrast, and color, plus optical character recognition (OCR) that can read printed text aloud. The products are marketed to consumers with conditions such as macular degeneration, glaucoma, and retinitis pigmentosa, and the company has also extended its wearables into medical, enterprise, and government markets.

NuEyes is one of a small group of companies, alongside eSight and IrisVision, that build head-worn electronic magnification aids for the visually impaired. Rather than manufacture its own optics from scratch, the company has historically paired its proprietary vision software with hardware from established headset makers, including the now defunct Osterhout Design Group (ODG), Pico Interactive, and HTC VIVE.

History

NuEyes was launched in 2016 by Mark Greget, who had previously founded Los Angeles Low Vision, a distributor of visual assistive technology. The idea grew out of the difficulties he saw legally blind customers face with existing low vision aids, and the early company combined custom software with Augmented Reality glasses and the wearer's own ability to relearn how to see through them. Greget bootstrapped the business on a small budget, which he later described as a difficult path for a hardware startup.

The company's first devices were built on the R-7 smart glasses from the Osterhout Design Group, hardware originally developed for military and enterprise use. NuEyes added its own lenses and software to let users magnify and view enhanced images of whatever they looked at, with magnification up to about 12x. When ODG ceased operations, NuEyes lost its supplier and had to move to new hardware platforms, which pushed it toward developing more independent solutions.

In December 2018 NuEyes announced a partnership with Pico Interactive to build its next generation of wearables, and the resulting NuEyes e2, a self contained headset for the visually impaired, was shown in early 2019. The company launched its Pro 3 smart glasses in 2020 and broadened its focus beyond low vision into enterprise, medical, gaming, and entertainment uses.

On December 31, 2020, NuEyes opened an equity crowdfunding campaign on the StartEngine platform, citing a pre money valuation of about 25 million US dollars and saying it would use the proceeds to accelerate sales and marketing. At the time the company reported third quarter year over year growth of more than 102 percent and said it had secured federal, state, and insurance reimbursement for its devices.

In December 2023 NuEyes announced a partnership with HTC VIVE to launch the NuEyes e3+, a low vision wearable powered by the HTC VIVE XR Elite headset. The company also expanded its leadership during this period; Dr. Andrew Fanous, a neurosurgeon, joined as Chief Medical Officer in October 2023.

Technology

NuEyes devices follow a common approach: a forward facing camera captures the scene in front of the wearer, and the live image is enhanced and shown on displays close to the eyes, so the user sees a magnified, higher contrast version of the world. The company's software adds variable magnification, several contrast and color modes, brightness control, and OCR with text to speech so printed material can be read aloud. Devices are operated through buttons on the headset, a wireless remote, or voice commands, and the see through and headset designs are meant to leave both of the wearer's hands free.

Because NuEyes builds on third party headsets, the underlying hardware has changed with each generation. The Pico Interactive based e2, for example, used a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with a 3K display (1440 by 1600 per eye) at a 90Hz refresh rate, a 101 degree field of view, and an autofocusing HD camera, with magnification up to roughly 18x. The later e3+ instead runs on the HTC VIVE XR Elite, using that headset's high definition passthrough cameras, adjustable diopters, and voice control to render a customizable view of the real world for people with macular degeneration and similar conditions.

Products

NuEyes splits its lineup between glasses style smart glasses, which are worn much like ordinary eyewear and can take prescription inserts, and headset style units that enclose the eyes and run as self contained devices. The smart glasses tend to suit users who want to move around and use the device throughout the day, while the headsets emphasize maximum magnification for stationary tasks such as reading.

Product	Approx. year	Type	Hardware base	Notes
NuEyes Pro	2016	AR smart glasses	ODG R-7	First product; camera-fed displays with magnification up to about 12x, adjustable color, contrast, and OCR with text to speech; priced around 5,995 US dollars
NuEyes e2	2019	Self-contained low vision headset	Pico Interactive (Snapdragon 835)	Announced Dec 2018; 3K display (1440 x 1600), 90Hz, 101-degree FOV, HD autofocus camera, up to 18x magnification, three contrast modes, OCR; announced at a retail price of about 2,995 US dollars
NuEyes Pro 3 / Pro 3e	2020	AR smart glasses	Standalone glasses	Expanded line aimed at low vision plus enterprise, medical, gaming, and entertainment use
NuEyes e3+	2023	Low vision XR headset	HTC VIVE XR Elite	Announced Dec 2023 with HTC VIVE; HD passthrough, customizable magnification and field of view, adjustable diopters, voice commands
NuEyes Pro 4	2020s	AR smart glasses	Standalone glasses	Later generation low vision smart glasses
NuLoupes / NuCaption	2020s	AR accessory products	Standalone glasses	NuLoupes target medical and dental precision work; NuCaption is a speech to text captioning system

Market position

NuEyes operates in the head worn electronic vision aid market, where its main peers are eSight and IrisVision. These devices are positioned as alternatives to handheld and desktop video magnifiers, offering hands free use and, in some cases, the ability to move around while wearing them. A recurring theme in the company's history is its reliance on partners for the headset hardware: its move from ODG to Pico Interactive and then to HTC VIVE reflects both the collapse of early AR hardware makers and the broader XR industry's shift toward standalone headsets. NuEyes has emphasized that its devices have obtained federal, state, and insurance reimbursement, a significant factor in the assistive technology market given the high cost of low vision wearables.