Key Takeaways

  • Azalea Vision has been selected for the European Innovation Council Accelerator and is eligible for up to €7.5 million in funding
  • The funding will support clinical development and final engineering of the company's medical-grade smart contact lens platform, which targets irregular corneas, higher-order aberrations and presbyopia
  • The company is using the EIC award to support upcoming financing efforts and advance the platform toward commercialization

Azalea Vision, a Belgian health technology company developing a medical-grade smart contact lens, has been selected for the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator, securing up to €7.5 million ($8.6 million) in funding to support clinical development of its platform.

The award includes a €2.5 million non-dilutive grant and a planned €5 million equity investment from the EIC Fund. According to the company, Azalea Vision was the only Belgian company selected during this funding round. The EIC Accelerator, part of the European Union's Horizon Europe program, supports deep technology companies developing breakthrough innovations with the potential to create or disrupt global markets. The program is highly competitive, with fewer than 5% of applicants advancing through its evaluation process.

Azalea said the funding will support clinical studies and final engineering work as it advances its smart contact lens platform toward commercialization. The company reported that technical validation of the platform is nearing completion.

The company's proprietary smart contact lens is being developed to improve vision for patients with irregular corneas, higher-order aberrations and presbyopia. In addition to its vision correction applications, the platform is designed to support future biosensing capabilities by measuring biomarkers in tears.

"This is one of the toughest funding programs in the world to win, and it validates everything we have been building—our technology, our vision, and the size of the market in front of us," said Andrés Vasquez Quintero, co-founder and chief technology officer of Azalea Vision. "Our technical validation is nearly complete and the core platform works. This award gives us the resources to prove it clinically, and to do it from Europe. We intend to move fast."

The company said selection by the EIC Accelerator provides both financial support and external validation of its technology, noting that the EIC Fund's planned equity participation is intended to encourage additional private investment.

Following the award, Azalea Vision said it is engaging with strategic and financial investors in Europe and the United States as it prepares its next financing round, with the goal of advancing clinical development and bringing its smart contact lens technology to market.