Lynx Shipping Add-on R-1 Mixed Reality Headset Coming Soon, CEO Details ‘Torturous’ Fundraising Environment

French startup Lynx hasn’t had an easy time getting the headset out the door, let alone funding its small hardware startup, which is dedicated to independent production of the R-1 mixed reality. There seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel though, as Lynx CEO Stan Larroque announced that a set of R-1 headphones should be shipping soon.

Larroque details the plan to deliver an additional 400 units between July and August in a recent Kickstarter update, noting that units were assembled earlier but were delayed due to financial issues with assembler Compal.

While those issues have now been resolved and those headphones are set to ship, Larroque details what he calls a “torturous” past 12 months, which he says is not related to the headphones themselves, but rather to the difficult environment for collecting funding for XR hardware in Europe.

“We had to close a deal of 30 million euros at the end of April, sign the deadline and everything. And it didn’t happen [sic] because the European investor had no money and lied to us. That was almost a death sentence, it’s the worst thing that can happen to a startup,” says Larroque.

 

 

Buoyed by the accepted near-death sentence, the company suffered another setback with a French public fund:

“Another is a French public fund that lies to us in their willingness to commit to our company. It took them more than 6 months to do a proper check, we spent hundreds of hours on the case with them (they had to do €15 million). They released one [letter of intent] in July 2023. All this to realize that they were talking bad about us behind our backs to other potential co-investors. A VC shared those emails with me and it really depressed me.”

Lynx announced some additional positive news. In the update, Larroque says the company is now partnering with a “major US financial partner” and remains optimistic about its product and roadmap, noting there is significant interest in the defense, industrial and medical sectors.

The company has raised additional funding outside of R-1’s successful Kickstarter campaign from late 2021, which brought in $800,000 in crowd funding. In 2019, before Kickstarter, Lynx secured a $2 million round. According to data obtained from CrunchbaseIts most recent Series A secured in 2022 from Somnium Space, bringing the startup $4 million, bringing a total of $6.8 million in funding to date.

Similar to the Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro, the Lynx R-1 offers mixed reality experiences thanks to its pass-through sensors and Snapdragon XR2 chip on board, though the company hopes to make it a more open and versatile device.