For most people, the idea of wearing a display inside a contact lens sounds like science fiction. For XPANCEO, it is an engineering problem with three hard parts: a display small enough to fit, a battery thin enough to wear, and brightness safe enough for the human eye.

The Dubai-based startup just announced it is deepening its partnership with JBD, a Shanghai micro-display company known for making some of the smallest screens on the planet. The two are jointly developing a custom micro-display purpose-built for smart contact lenses. JBD previously created the display tech behind XPANCEO’s printed circuit board and optical system, which can project images in focus when worn. The next step is scaling production.

The display challenge is deceptively simple. A contact lens is roughly 0.5 millimeters thick at its center. The electronics layer inside needs to be closer to the thickness of a human hair to avoid irritation. JBD’s existing micro-LED displays are already tiny enough to fit on a fingertip and can hit 3 million nits of brightness in laboratory conditions, but shrinking the package further while keeping it manufacturable at scale is the hard part.

Brightness is another constraint with its own physics. Because the image projects directly onto the retina, smart contact lenses can get away with lower brightness than traditional AR glasses. But the threshold between comfortable visibility and ocular safety is narrow, and both companies say they are engineering light management systems that stay well within established safety limits.

The battery problem is the third piece. In May, XPANCEO struck a similar collaboration with French solid-state battery startup ITEN. Conventional lithium-ion cells are too thick and rigid for an ocular wearable. Solid-state batteries offer a thinner, safer alternative, though they are still early in the manufacturing curve.

XPANCEO is well funded to tackle these challenges. Its Series A round, closed in July 2025, brought in $250 million at a $1.35 billion valuation. That kind of capital suggests investors believe the contact lens form factor is more than a novelty, and that the company can deliver on a timeline before display and battery tech catches up naturally.

The obvious question is whether consumers are ready for smart contact lenses at all. The still-recent privacy backlash against camera glasses shows social acceptance lags hardware capability. But smart contacts sidestep the camera issue by design, they could offer augmented reality without the obvious tell of a camera lens on your face. That distinction might matter more than the technology itself.

Source: Road to VR