Another $45 Million for AR Contact Lenses; The Latest From CES

This morning, Saratoga, CA-based startup Mojo Vision announced that it has raised an additional $45 million for its Series B-1 funding, bringing the total for the round to $96 million. New investors—including Amazon’s Alexa Fund and enterprise AR player PTC—evidently have some faith in Mojo’s progress toward AR contact lenses.

As I’ve noted in Reality Check before, Mojo faces the dual challenges of making its AR contacts actually work and convincing people to wear devices that sit on their eyeballs. Mojo might have a chance with one group of target customers—people with severe vision problems, such as cataracts. But the other group it's initially targeting are athletes. My brief experience with a Mojo user interface demo makes me wonder about the company’s prospects with that audience.