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A Saratoga startup that makes smart contact lenses — and turned heads at past Consumer Electronics Shows — on Friday said it is putting development of its lenses on hold and cutting 75% of its staff.
Mojo Vision Inc. CEO Drew Perkins broke the news in a blog post as others were rolling out their latest tech products at CES in Las Vegas.
Perkins blamed difficulty in raising capital as the reason why his company will now shift to development of Micro-LED display technology "where we know there is significant near-term market potential." The company has raised about $183 million since it was founded in 2015 and was valued at $546 million after its most recent round a year ago, according to PitchBook Data.
The Mojo Lens was designed to have a built-in display that shows useful information without having to look at a screen or lose focus on the world around the wearer. The tiny electronics involved required the use of a hard contact lens that needed to be washed and recharged daily.
"Although we haven’t had the chance yet to see it ship and to reach its full potential in the marketplace, we have proven that what was once considered science fiction can be developed into a technical reality," Perkins said in his blog post. "Even though the pursuit of our vision for Invisible Computing is on hold for now, we strongly believe that there will be a future market for Mojo Lens and expect to accelerate it when the time is right."
The Micro LED technology behind the contact lenses is what the company will now seek to develop. Perkins said it is powerful and flexible enough to serve a wide range of applications on anything from next generation wearables to future televisions and video walls.
"We believe Micro-LED will disrupt the entire $160 billion display industry and our unique technology puts us at the forefront of this disruption," he wrote.
Mojo Vision said that before the layoffs it had 120 employees, with about 95% of them working in Silicon Valley.