Reshaping contact lens manufacturing with new quality productivity, Iris has completed over 100 million RMB in B+ funding, with Cenova Capital as the sole investor and CEC Capital serving as the exclusive financial advisor.
Recently, the world's leading R&D and manufacturing platform for contact lenses——Iris (爱睿思)(Xiamen) Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Airis")Announced the completion of over 100 million RMB in B+ round financing.This round of financing was led exclusively by Cenova Capital (千骥资本), a well-known investment institution, with CEC Capital (易凯资本) serving as the exclusive financial advisor for this round.
Game Changers Enter: The Advanced Manufacturing Breakthrough of China's Domestic Supply Chain
The contact lens industry has dual attributes as both a consumer product and a medical device, with high barriers to production technology. Currently, over 90% of brands on the market are produced through OEM manufacturing. Among them, daily disposable lenses have become the mainstream in the global market due to their health and convenience benefits, and are in a stage of rapid growth. However, because of their extremely short wearing cycle, they have extremely high requirements in terms of material biocompatibility, lens forming precision, and aseptic processes, making the technical difficulty and production challenges more prominent. For a long time, the Chinese mainland market has been dominated by foreign manufacturers.
The commissioning of the smart contact lens factory independently developed by iRIS (爱睿思) marks the first time for a Chinese domestic brand to achieve independent iteration capabilities in core materials, process technology, and production equipment, and has reached or even surpassed the standards of leading manufacturers in Europe, America, Japan, South Korea, and Chinese Taiwan in multiple key technical indicators.
For a long time, the precision manufacturing of contact lenses has faced the core challenge of difficult to achieve simultaneously in terms of quality, cost, and scale. Traditional production lines are highly dependent on manual labor, with bottlenecks in yield and consistency; imported high-end automated production lines require huge investments and their core technologies are controlled by others; while existing integrated automated production lines in China, due to insufficient understanding of underlying processes, have operational performance limited by team experience, with both quality and efficiency failing to reach ideal levels. Iris (爱睿思) abandoned the conventional path of equipment integration and embarked on a full-chain independent R&D path guided by intelligent manufacturing and new quality productive forces—from designing core precision injection molding and compression molding equipment, to creating a complete set of unique production processes, and achieving high coordination among all equipment and control systems, thereby establishing a complete independent intelligent manufacturing system. The core advantage of this system lies in improving overall equipment efficiency to a level unmatched by similar factories, fundamentally solving the long-standing industry challenge of difficult to achieve simultaneously in quality, efficiency, and production capacity.
In-depth layout of hard technology R&D, dual recognition from leading brands and global customers
Built on a strong manufacturing platform, Iris has established an interdisciplinary R&D team—bringing together professional Taiwanese compatriots, talents from both sides of the Taiwan Strait work together to overcome high-end manufacturing challenges, interpreting the industrial value of cross-strait integrated development through practical results. Leveraging this team, both consumer products and medical applications R&D lines are accelerating in parallel, with multiple directions moving from the R&D phase to commercialization. The self-developed silicone hydrogel contact lenses have a transmissibility (Dk/t) of over 160, which is 5 to 10 times that of traditional hydrogel lenses. Its oxygen permeability performance is at a leading level in the industry, breaking through the core performance threshold long dominated by international brands, and has completed commercial verification and is about to be launched to the market. In the field of myopia management for adolescents, Iris has launched the first soft defocus lens on the market that combines defocus theory and contrast theory. The product's comfort and wearing adaptability have both received clinical validation. In the field of dry eye treatment, Iris's Oxi-free™ patented technology, jointly developed with Moody, Tsinghua University, and the Second Affiliated Hospital Zhejiang University School of Medicine Ophthalmology research group, has completed preliminary clinical validation in scavenging free radicals and inhibiting inflammatory factors. It can effectively prevent and treat dry eye-related eye diseases, breaking the vicious cycle of the dry eye disease process. The simultaneous advancement of these three product lines marks Iris's continuous evolution from a manufacturing platform to a provider of comprehensive eye health solutions.
Technical strength has ultimately been validated by market selection, with numerous well-known contact lens brands such as Moody, Vue (视客集团), Lemonade, LaPeche (拉拜诗), and Sweet Color becoming long-term and deep partners of Iris. Additionally, Iris's manufacturing capabilities have gained recognition in overseas markets—the company has established deep cooperation with clients in Japan and Southeast Asia, marking a substantial step in its international expansion.
Using new quality productive forces as the engine to drive a comprehensive leap from manufacturing to innovation
As a key project in Fujian Province and Xiamen City, Iris landed in Tong'an, Xiamen, and has been accelerating its growth with the continuous support of Xiamen City and Tong'an District. Currently, the company has obtained the recognition of a high-tech enterprise, with 18 patents and other intellectual properties accumulated, covering core areas such as equipment design, process flow, product technology, and intelligent control. Based on this, it has successfully built Asia's leading fully automated "lights-out factory" for contact lenses. Constructed according to Industry 4.0 standards, it transforms independent intellectual property into new quality productivity, which is a concrete practice of high technology in the manufacturing end of precision medical devices.
In the pursuit of product quality, every technical choice at Iris (爱睿思) starts with the user experience. Our independently developed high-precision optical molds use full mold pressing technology, with all mold cores, cavities, and inserts produced in-house. Through precision machining, we mold errors to an extremely small range, fundamentally ensuring the accuracy and consistency of lens parameters. Our independently designed magnetic levitation transportation system uses four-corner positioning and frictionless design, ensuring highly stable output of colored lens patterns while significantly improving production efficiency. Innovative light curing technology effectively controls lens expansion coefficients and dimensional variations, allowing each lens to achieve industry-leading precision in molding. In terms of quality control, Iris has implemented full-process AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) covering ten stages and identifying over 30 types of defects. Each lens is also given a unique traceability code, enabling full-chain traceability from production to circulation.
This marks the first time that China's domestic supply chain has established complete independent capabilities spanning from R&D innovation and core processes to system integration. It provides truly domestic options for both domestic and international brands seeking top-tier manufacturing partners. The Chinese manufacturing and R&D capabilities represented by iRex are redefining the position of China's contact lens supply chain in the global market.
Wu Hai, managing partner of Qianji Capital Management, said:"The contact lens manufacturing market is vast, but it is currently dominated by companies from outside mainland China. As Chinese contact lens brands go global, the comprehensive advantages of China's supply chain in terms of efficiency, cost, and quality control will be fully realized, making the rise of Chinese companies an inevitable trend. In this context, Iris has built a unique competitive barrier through independent R&D across the entire value chain. Its smart factory has achieved international standards in processes and quality control, and has gained breakthrough cost advantages. We look forward to witnessing this shift in the industry landscape together with Iris."
Iris (爱睿思) representative stated:"We believe that eye health is a cause worth dedicating a decade to—building an advanced contact lens manufacturing and innovation system that truly belongs to China, based on the fundamental safety standards for consumers' eye health. To this end, we have independently designed our equipment, independently developed our processes, and integrated the entire system, step by step constructing a complete smart manufacturing system with multiple core metrics reaching or surpassing international top levels. Behind this is the hard-earned strength accumulated by a team with genuine independent R&D capabilities and a commitment to long-term investment. But this is just our foundation, not our destination. What we truly want to do is to continuously break through in new materials, new processes, and next-generation products, and to explore new possibilities in consumer products and medical applications through our R&D capabilities. This funding round is precisely injecting momentum to accelerate the implementation of these directions. We hope to use China's manufacturing and R&D capabilities to bring new possibilities to global eye health innovation."
Li Jin, a partner at CEC Capital (易凯资本), said:"The restructuring of global supply chains and the expansion of Chinese brands overseas have jointly opened a rare time window, providing a critical opportunity for Chinese enterprises to secure their position in the global market. We are very pleased to have helped Iris complete this round of financing and to witness this key historical process firsthand," said Zheng Yong, Managing Director of Yicai Capital. "In the eye health sector, Chinese enterprises have for the first time the opportunity to secure their position in the global market with complete technological and manufacturing capabilities. We are honored to have facilitated this step during this window period and look forward to witnessing together with Iris the continuous extension of China's manufacturing and R&D capabilities on the global stage."