Azalea Vision Puts EIC Accelerator Money on Smart Contact Lenses

People with an irregular cornea, after disease, injury or surgery, live with blurred vision, glare and halos, and their treatments range from spectacles and contact lenses to a corneal transplant, according to the project the EIC has just funded. Azalea Vision, a Ghent company spun out of imec and Ghent University, has built a scleral contact lens with what it calls an artificial iris inside: a liquid crystal cell, driven by a microchip and a micro-battery, that changes the size of the opening through which light enters the eye. The company says the lens filters peripheral light so that only focused light reaches the retina, per biovox.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, ALMA, at its May 2026 cut-off for blended finance. CORDIS records a signed grant agreement, dated 9 October 2026, with an EU contribution of €2,498,825 for two years from 1 November 2026 to 31 October 2028. The company's announcement of 2 July 2026 adds a planned €5 million equity investment from the EIC Fund, which no EIC Fund document reviewed for this article confirms as completed. The project is days old, so this article sets out what Azalea promised and what can already be checked.

An iris made of liquid crystal

The idea is an old optical trick made adjustable. A small aperture increases depth of focus and reduces the effect of optical aberrations, the "pinhole effect" in the words of the company's own study registration. Azalea's lens puts a liquid crystal filter inside a scleral lens, the large rigid lens type that the ALMA objective lists among today's state-of-the-art options. The company's CTO described the mechanism in imec's 2021 release as a lens that "filters incoming light in real-time by using a thin liquid crystal cell", combined with a custom microchip. Optics and Photonics News reported in May 2025 that each lens is custom made and carries a guest-host liquid crystal display, a microchip, a micro-battery and NFC antennas, so that a phone or watch can switch its modes.

The ALMA objective in CORDIS adds a wireless smart case that charges and disinfects the lens. It positions the product against spectacles, ordinary and rigid scleral contact lenses and corneal transplants, and states that current scleral lenses "often fail to fully address higher order aberrations". That is the project's claim; no comparative clinical data for the smart lens was found in the registries and company releases reviewed on 4 November 2026.

The target has moved over time. In 2021 the company pitched the lens for light sensitivity in iris disorders such as aniridia and coloboma, and for photophobia in chronic migraine. By the December 2023 prototype, reported by biovox, irregular astigmatism from keratoconus was the primary indication, and the 2026 EIC project concentrates on irregular corneas, with presbyopia and tear-based biosensing named as later uses.

The first patient study tests a pinhole, not the smart lens

Azalea announced on 28 September 2026 that the first patient had enrolled in a proof-of-concept study at University Hospital Antwerp and Visser Contact Lenses in the Netherlands. Its registry entry, NCT07559188 on ClinicalTrials.gov, plans 16 participants in two groups, keratoconus and presbyopia, with completion estimated for 31 March 2027. The primary measures are the change in higher-order aberrations for keratoconus and in near visual acuity for presbyopia, about six weeks after baseline.

The registry is precise about the device. The NOA lens Type 2 is a rigid gas permeable scleral lens with "an integrated optical aperture (pinhole) created by an opaque dye", printed on an internal surface and sealed in the lens. The entry describes it as "a functional prototype for future 'smart lens' technology, specifically the ALMA Smart Lens", and mentions no electronics. The study therefore tests the optical principle, a fixed pinhole, rather than the adjustable liquid crystal iris. The CEO said as much in the release: "Enrolling the first patient on schedule puts the optical principle behind our smart lens to the test in patients."

The only reported on-eye use of the electronic lens is the December 2023 demonstration, in which co-founder Vásquez Quintero wore the prototype himself, reported by biovox and by Glance, which says it was his left eye. No result of that test was found in public. The CORDIS report of the earlier GAIA project states that an eye-data collection study on corneal irregularities had ethics approval and had started at UZ Antwerp by February 2025; no results of it were found in public.

What the EIC project promised

The ALMA objective says Azalea will run first-in-human and pivotal clinical trials with EIC support to obtain CE mark and FDA approval, with an initial focus on irregular corneas in Europe, the UK and the US. It counts nearly 5 million people affected in those markets and a total addressable population of 614,000 patients. The figures are the company's own; the project gives no source for them. The company also told optics.org in April 2025 that its goal was an Investigational Device Exemption from the US Food and Drug Administration, and the company has announced no such exemption.

1. A working smart lens prototypeShown onceWorn by the CTO in December 2023, per biovox; no data published.
2. Clinical proof of the optical principleUnder wayNOA study recruiting since 28 September 2026, completion estimated March 2027, per ClinicalTrials.gov.
3. First-in-human trial of the smart lensNot startedThe company calls it planned; no ClinicalTrials.gov entry for it was found on 4 November 2026.
4. Pivotal trial, CE mark and FDA approvalNot due yetALMA runs until 31 October 2028, per CORDIS.

The earlier EIC grant: a graphene iris

ALMA is Azalea's second EIC project. GAIA, an EIC Transition project from March 2024 to February 2027, aims to replace the lens's conventional electrode materials, PEDOT:PSS and indium tin oxide, with graphene electrodes from the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2). CORDIS records €2,498,375 in EU funding, of which €1,748,500 goes to Azalea and €749,875 to ICN2. Its first periodic report, covering March 2024 to February 2025, says graphene electrodes with more than 90% transmission and less than 0.5% haze were made and patterned by laser at a resolution below 50 µm. It also reports that performance testing of the artificial iris was still in progress. CORDIS shows no later report, so a finished graphene iris has not been reported.

The money and the accounts

Azalea's first round, announced by imec on 8 July 2021, was €8 million, called a Series A: €6.2 million of equity led by imec.xpand with Elaia, Sensinnovat and Shigeru, and a €1.8 million grant from the Flemish agency VLAIO. In April 2025 the company announced a first close of €9 million in a round again called a Series A, aiming at €15 million, per optics.org and Optics and Photonics News. Glance reported the same round as $9 million of $15 million. The reports also disagree on SPRIM Global Investments and Afrimobility: optics.org calls them prior investors, Silicon Canals calls them new ones.

The annual accounts, as summarised by Busibee and Companyweb, show a loss in every year: €758,456 for the first long financial year to December 2021, then €2,648,187, €3,306,943, €1,618,842 and €3,273,936 for 2022 to 2025. The summaries show no turnover figure. Equity was negative at the end of 2023 and 2024, at minus €2,543,639 at its lowest, while debts rose to €3,908,583. In 2025 equity turned positive again at €1,432,395 and debts fell to €501,359; the summaries do not show what became of it. Cash at the end of 2025 stood at €1,047,147. The Belgian Official Gazette lists changes to the articles of association and share capital on 4 March 2025 and 2 July 2026, per Busibee; the amounts are not shown in the summaries.

Where the company stands

The register lists Azalea Vision as active, and its 2025 accounts were filed on 17 July 2026, per Companyweb. Staff stood at 7 full-time equivalents in 2025, up from 5.4 in 2024. On 12 August 2026 the company named co-founder Vásquez Quintero, the inventor of the platform, as chief executive while he keeps the CTO role; Enrique Vega, chief executive since the start, moved to the board. The company says the new CEO's priorities are the EIC-funded clinical programme, regulatory submissions and the next financing round.

Why the EU funds it

ALMA names a CE mark as its regulatory target alongside FDA approval, and for a medical device that mark is governed in the EU by the Medical Device Regulation. The technology itself comes out of Flemish public research at imec and Ghent University, and GAIA pairs it with Catalan graphene research at ICN2, so both EIC grants fund a European lab result on its way to a product. The CTO put the point in the company's EIC release: the award gives Azalea "the resources to prove it clinically, and to do it from Europe."

Azalea Vision has not been asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.