Tobii

Tobii
Information
Type	Public company
Industry	Eye tracking, Attention computing
Founded	2001
Founder	John Elvesjö, Mårten Skogö, Henrik Eskilsson
Headquarters	Stockholm, Sweden
Notable Personnel	Fadi Pharaon (CEO)
Products	Eye tracking hardware and software, Tobii Eye Tracker 5, integrated XR eye tracking
Website	https://www.tobii.com

Tobii is a Swedish technology company that develops and sells eye tracking and attention computing products. It is the largest supplier of Eye tracking technology to the virtual and augmented reality industry, and its sensors and software are integrated into headsets including the PlayStation VR2, the HTC Vive Pro Eye, the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition, and the Pico Neo 3 Pro Eye. The company was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

Tobii's business spans scientific research instruments, assistive communication devices for people with disabilities, consumer eye trackers for PC gaming, automotive driver monitoring, and eye tracking modules built into extended reality hardware. In VR and AR, gaze data from a Tobii sensor enables Foveated rendering, where the headset renders the small region the user is looking at in full detail and the periphery at lower resolution to save processing power. Tobii has been listed on Nasdaq Stockholm since 2015.

History

Founding and early products

Tobii was founded in 2001 by three Swedish entrepreneurs, John Elvesjö, Mårten Skogö, and Henrik Eskilsson, who had studied at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. The company set out to commercialize eye tracking, the measurement of where a person is looking, for use outside specialized laboratories.

In 2002 Tobii launched what it describes as the first plug-and-play eye tracker, a product aimed at the academic and market-research community that became the basis of its Tobii Pro research business. In 2005 the company released an eye-controlled computer that let people with conditions such as ALS or cerebral palsy communicate by looking at letters and symbols on a screen. That product line grew into the Tobii Dynavox assistive technology business.

Expansion into integrated and consumer devices

In 2014 Tobii introduced an eye tracking platform designed to be built into consumer and purpose-built devices rather than sold only as standalone laboratory hardware. This formed the Tobii Tech business unit and brought the company's sensors into gaming laptops, monitors, and, later, VR headsets. Tobii also sells a consumer peripheral line for PC gamers; the Tobii Eye Tracker 5, announced in 2020, is a desktop sensor that tracks head and eye movement and is supported by a range of simulation and flight games.

Tobii completed an initial public offering and listed on Nasdaq Stockholm in April 2015, raising about 400 million Swedish kronor.

Spin-off of Tobii Dynavox

In 2021 Tobii split its assistive technology arm into a separate publicly traded company. After an extraordinary general meeting in October 2021 approved distributing the shares to existing owners, Tobii Dynavox AB began trading independently on Nasdaq Stockholm, with its first day of trading on December 9, 2021. The remaining company, combining the Tobii Pro and Tobii Tech businesses, kept the Tobii name and continued to focus on eye tracking and attention computing.

FotoNation acquisition and automotive

On January 31, 2024, Tobii completed the acquisition of FotoNation Ltd, a developer of computer vision and imaging technology, and combined it with its own in-car sensing work to form an automotive segment branded Tobii Autosense. The segment targets driver monitoring and interior sensing systems for car manufacturers.

Eye tracking technology

Tobii's eye trackers use near-infrared illumination and one or more cameras to capture reflections from the eye, then apply image-processing algorithms to compute the direction of the user's gaze. The same approach is packaged in several forms: standalone screen-mounted units for research, modules embedded in laptops and monitors, the desktop gaming peripheral line, and compact camera-and-illuminator assemblies designed to fit inside the optics of a VR or AR headset.

Eye tracking in VR and AR

Tobii supplies the eye tracking subsystem for a number of VR headsets and is the dominant vendor in the category. Some makers build their own eye tracking instead: Varjo, for example, develops integrated trackers running at 200 Hz per eye in its headsets. The company's gaze data drives several headset features:

• Foveated rendering, which renders the area the user is looking at in high detail and the periphery at lower resolution to cut the graphics workload.
• Dynamic distortion compensation, which adjusts the lens distortion correction in real time based on where the eyes are pointed to keep the image sharp.
• Gaze-based interaction and Social VR features such as having an avatar's eyes follow the wearer's real gaze.

The HTC Vive Pro Eye, announced at CES in January 2019, was an early high-profile headset built on Tobii eye tracking. Tobii's sensors were later integrated into the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition, the Pico Neo 2 Eye and Pico Neo 3 Pro Eye, and the Pimax Crystal.

In February 2022 Tobii said it was in negotiation to supply eye tracking for Sony's next VR headset, and on July 1, 2022 it confirmed it had been selected as the eye tracking technology provider for the PlayStation VR2, a console headset that uses the feature for foveated rendering. Tobii said the deal was expected to account for more than 10 percent of its revenue in 2022.

Current status

As of 2026 Tobii remains an independent company listed on Nasdaq Stockholm and reports its business in three areas: Products and Solutions (research and discovery instruments), Integrations (eye tracking built into partner devices, including XR), and Autosense (automotive sensing). In its interim report for the third quarter of 2025 the company recorded net sales of about 158 million Swedish kronor and described soft demand in its XR project pipeline, while pointing to customer interest shifting toward smart-glasses-type products. Tobii says it has about 500 employees, holds more than 1,000 patents and applications, and has been the global leader in eye tracking since its founding in 2001. Fadi Pharaon, a former Ericsson executive, became chief executive on January 1, 2026, succeeding Anand Srivatsa, who had led the company since December 2021.