The French XR hardware startup, Lynx, has secured $4 million in Series A funding to become the ‘European Champion of Mixed Reality.’ The round was led by social VR platform Somnium Space and saw participation from what the company states are its early supporters and other investors in the field, such as ex-Meta and Google engineers.

The latest round brings the company’s total outside funding to $6.8 million. Lynx had raised $800,000 through its R-1 headset’s Kickstarter campaign back in late 2021, after a seed round of $2 million in 2019. Artur Sychov, Founder and CEO of Somnium Space, will now be joining the company’s Board of Directors.

Lynx R-1 is powered by Qualcomm’s XR2 chipset and features high-quality cameras and virtual reality displays to enable passthrough AR in addition to standard VR, making it an early pioneer in the mixed reality category. The headset also incorporates a ‘four-fold catadioptric freeform prism’ instead of the conventional Fresnel lenses, which helps slim down its size to a great extent.

“At Somnium Space, we truly believe in the future of open and decentralized Metaverse, which empowers its users. This includes not only software but also, very importantly, hardware,” said Sychov.

Lynx has set high ambitions for its R-1 headset. The consumer version of the device is priced at $600, and it is set to compete with established players entering the category with Meta’s Project Cambria and Apple’s rumored mixed reality headset.

“We have this opportunity right here to create the European Champion of Mixed Reality with our work at Lynx, supported by a vibrant community of users and developers desperate to see alternatives to Big Tech companies’ products and their closed ecosystems,” said Stan Larroque, Founder and CEO of Lynx.

Since it locked in the design for Lynx R-1, the company has steadily expanded its presence in Paris and established an international office in Taiwan.

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