Press release by Laclarée on November 15, 2019.
Laclarée gets financial support from Kreaxi (France) and HighTech GründerFonds HTGF (Germany) alongside with Bpifrance and a pool of banks. The total amount raised will be 2m€, including non-dilutive financing. Laclarée develops adaptive eyeglasses for presbyopia correction. This seed investment will help developing the product to reach industrialisation and market readiness by the end of 2021.
In Europe, more than 25 million presbyopes are unsatisfied with progressive lenses. Laclarée has patented an adaptive lens technology based on microfluidics in order to help these people. After 3 years of work in its labs, Laclarée has demonstrated a portable prototype combining the adaptive lens technology including today’s best refractive correction lenses (astigmatism, myopia or hyperopia). Thanks to this technology presbyopes shall retrieve their natural autofocus capabilities and see at all distances with an enhanced field of view, compared to state of the art progressive lenses. The fundraising now allows Laclarée to hire new talents in order to prepare the next fully integrated version of eyeglasses for a real beta-test, a key step before industrialisation in 2021 and market launch in 2022. “We are very happy that Kreaxi and HTGF join our venture, confirming our international ambition: it will be excellent for the development of our company” mentions the CEO, Bruno BERGE. “Because presbyopia affects almost all human beings after the age of 45 and progressive lenses still leave a significant part of the population dissatisfied, Laclarée targets a huge market of billions of eyeglasses in the world. We are convinced that Laclarée's team can bring a disruptive solution to the market thanks to its deep technology” adds Sébastien Touvron, CEO and Managing Partner at Kreaxi. Lucille Bonnet, senior investment manager at High-Tech Gründerfonds continues: “Laclarée´s eyeglasses are unique because they have been designed from day-1 to combine performance and aesthetics, which is key to unlock the existing and growing market potential.”
About Laclarée
Laclarée was founded in 2016 by Bruno Berge, physicist and entrepreneur, joined by a team gathering high-tech skills in optics, electronics, materials and microfluidics. The company has labs in Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, partnership with INL (Institut des Nanotechnologies de Lyon), and is supported by Bpifrance. Laclarée has been awarded of many prizes, including i-LAB in France, and SME-Instrument in Europe.
For high resolution press photos, more material, please visit Laclarée platform.