Exciting things are happening in the Extended Reality (XR) world. Imagine you were able to stroll through your favorite designer’s virtual storefront. With just the subtle movements of your eyes, you are immediately taken to a classic jacket that catches your interest. Seamlessly, details about the jacket, its price, material and size available are displayed because of that twinkle in your eye. That experience is just the tip of the iceberg; much more is on the horizon.

inseye’s team has developed a futuristic and extraordinary technology that is set to transform your world and the worlds of Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MX) and Virtual Reality (VR). Founder and CEO Maciej (Matt) Szurek, along with CTO Piotr Krukowski and COO Maciej Kossowski have developed a feather-light eye-tracker technology that offers an effortless, hands-free, gaze-controlled interface that provides immediate and accurate responses to head and eye movements. Just direct your gaze – look down to scroll, right to pan. Unlike camera-based AR, ineye’s technology offers low power consumption and a low bill of materials making it the future of XR.

The meet-cute and team dynamics

Matt met Piotr at an accelerator six years ago. The two bonded quickly over their shared passion of serial entrepreneurship, technology and the future of extended reality. Piotr shares, “I was running my startup in the VR field, and Matt was a mentor at this accelerator.”

Along with mentoring at the largest Polish incubator, Matt’s mpressive background includes working for more than a decade for global corporations including FMCG, Mars, Volvo and Panasonic. He modestly admits, “My superpower is basically selling and this is what I do. I work on business development and fundraising.” Piotr is on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and a serial entrepreneur. While most people are going to high school dances, Piotr started his first business at the age of 16.

Maciej joined the team after some coercion. Matt shares, “Maciej is my good old friend from high school. We have known each other for 30 years. He has spent 19 years at various positions at Coca Cola and his last gig was managing operations for a couple of countries in Central Europe for Coke.” With a laugh, he shares, “I asked him when he was going to stop selling sugared water and join inseye to work on new technologies.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

Piotr admits, “I think that my personal love for a challenge, for a risk has moved me since forever. I think this is also something that Matt and I have in common, which makes us a great team. We actually don’t believe in boundaries here, and we can do it all. We don’t see limits, instead, we crash through barriers. Because, now as a startup company, we have had to face so many challenges that it’s difficult even to imagine and even express. But we have been working together for six years.” He laughs, “That’s longer than some marriages.” But seriously, he adds, “Because it has been difficult and full of challenges, it means something.”

The technical challenges and evolution of inseye

After that fateful day six years ago, the team very quickly went to work and haven’t stopped since. Piotr explains, “Our focus was on developing a relatively easy piece of hardware that had great optics. It was a product similar to Google Cardboard, basically a headset compatible with the smartphone.”

From there, they quickly evolved into a medical company, were looking to fundraise for that project, and managed 100,000 euro revenue and good traction. They quickly realized they would need some help with scaling and competing with big brands. So, they did what successful entrepreneurs do: they pivoted.

Taking advice from some external venture capitalists, they started exploring new applications for their deep expertise in the VR domain. “Our technology was the perfect match for helping children with vision disorders. It had a separate view, separate display per each eye, so separate stimuli, which is actually the foundation for vision therapy for amblyopia (lazy eye) and strabismus (crossed eyes).” They also developed a set of games for that VR platform.

As they continued with R&D and tried to improve objective measurement in VR for the medical field, they began exploring various eye-tracking options, from camera-eye tracking to laser/mirror-based solutions for additional purposes. While working on the projects under grants and investment capital, they received what many would take as “bad news.”

Turning lemons into lemonade

They went to a conference to test their product. Matt explains, “The head of XR products at a leading tech innovation company we were promoting our solution with told us, ‘What you have here is great. You have a medical approach; you have high precision. Everything is good and high quality, but it’s also made with high-priced components, so it’s not scalable for us. It’s not suitable for B2C or B2B mass market devices.” He advised them to build something for no more than $5.00 instead of the current $100.00 BOM and design it without the use of a camera and less power consumption–a tough ask.

But they didn’t balk at that seemingly impossible challenge. Instead, they made some lemonade. “We found that using photo sensors instead of a camera could be the right approach because there is no image processing, and we can do it with little power consumption. We excluded most of the expensive components from the eye tracking. We showed the first prototype in January 2023.” Although it was a rough version of the current product, people from the industry were shocked at its capabilities and potential. “We collected many business cards, contacts and leads that are currently evolving into integration and POC proof of concept contracts.”

“That conference was a breakthrough for us. We realized that this eye tracking could be done not only for medical applications but also a perfect combination for XR and especially augmented reality. And we decided to focus on the XR applications.

Next-up for inseye

Since then, inseye has been making significant progress. Matt shares, “Our perception of the market, who our customers are, is becoming more precise each quarter.” They are also making vast improvements to the accuracy, robustness and design.

Goodbye, smart watches, smart glasses, and augmented reality (AR) glasses are in inseye’s future. “They have to look like regular eyewear. No one wants to walk around looking like they walked out of a sci-fi movie,” Piotr explains. And with their eye-tracking technology, it is possible. “You don’t need a big battery to use this gaze input, which is the most natural way of interacting for AR, especially for AR glasses. People don’t want to wear a hand controller in their pockets. We know people want to be able to receive a notification and open it just by looking at it. We have a scientist working on that project.” What could be cooler?

Also on the horizon is a high sampling rate, which tracks users’ cognitive functions. Matt explains, “It allows the ability to track the mental well-being of the user.” Interestingly, the eye reflects how people’s neural systems work and perform. He adds, “Our technology’s high sampling rate, which refers to the number of times it collects signals from the eye, allows us to obtain very accurate specifics of the user’s eye movement. Those specifics correlate with cognitive load, user fatigue, attention, and emotions.”

What started as a chance meeting at an accelerator six years ago has blossomed into a formidable team that is challenging the boundaries of XR innovation. Their deep dive into the realm of Extended Reality (XR) has resulted in groundbreaking technology that will forever change how we interact with the world. inseye’s feather-light eye-tracker technology unlocks a hands-free, gaze-controlled interface, offering unparalleled responsiveness to head and eye movements. And the upcoming release of their AR glasses, sleekly and discreetly designed and powered by their eye-tracking technology is set to revolutionize human-computer interaction. With integration agreements and contracts on the horizon, inseye’s future in the XR landscape is so bright that we all need shades (and smart glasses).

Join inseye’s visionary founders as they embark on an XR revolution that is redefining human-computer interactions, and by supporting inseye’s kickstarter, you will help shape the future of groundbreaking gaze-controlled technology.