Azalea Vision Awarded Prestigious EIC Accelerator Funding to Advance Smart Contact Lens into Clinical Development

Azalea Vision, a Belgian healthtech company building the first medical-grade smart contact lens, today announced it has been selected for the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator, the European Union’s flagship program for breakthrough, market-creating deep tech. Azalea is the only Belgian company selected in this round and will receive up to €7.5 million, including a non-dilutive €2.5 million grant and a planned €5 million equity investment from the EIC Fund, to advance its medical-grade smart contact lens platform into clinical development.

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Beyond the funding, the award is a strong external endorsement of Azalea’s technology and long-term vision. Built on its proprietary smart contact lens platform, Azalea’s smart lens is designed to improve the quality of life of the millions of people living with irregular corneas, higher-order aberrations and presbyopia. The same device also opens the door to a biosensing platform that can measure a broad range of biomarkers in tears, one of the body’s purest fluids. The EIC’s endorsement marks it as one of the most promising medical-device opportunities emerging from Europe.

Europe’s most selective innovation funding

The EIC Accelerator, part of the EU’s Horizon Europe program, supports the start-ups judged most likely to create or disrupt global markets, and fewer than 5% of applicants make it through its expert and jury review.

Because the EIC Fund invests its own equity alongside the grant, selection signals genuine confidence in a company’s technology, vision and market, and de-risks the opportunity for private co-investors. Azalea Vision ranked among the highest-scoring applicants in its cohort and begins the funded program immediately.

The funding is directed at the clinical work ahead, alongside the final engineering steps needed to bring the platform to patients. With core platform functionality established and technical validation nearing completion, the EIC award accelerates the transition from proven technology to a certified medical product.

“This is one of the toughest funding programs in the world to win, and it validates everything we have been building — our technology, our vision, and the size of the market in front of us,” said Andrés Vasquez Quintero, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Azalea Vision. “Our technical validation is nearly complete and the core platform works. This award gives us the resources to prove it clinically, and to do it from Europe. We intend to move fast.”

With the EIC’s endorsement secured, Azalea Vision is opening conversations with strategic and financial investors across Europe and the United States to co-invest alongside the EIC Fund in its upcoming financing round. The company sees the award as both a launchpad for clinical execution and a clear signal to international capital that a category-defining medical-device company is being built in Europe.

About Azalea Vision

Azalea Vision is a Belgian healthtech company developing the first medical-grade smart lens platform designed to sense, adapt and connect in real time. Its lens-embedded system integrates adaptive optics, custom microelectronics, liquid-crystal technology and connectivity to address vision conditions and enable tear-based health monitoring. Founded in 2021 as a spin-off from imec and Ghent University, Azalea Vision is advancing smart lens technology toward clinical translation.

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