Second Sight Medical Products Inc. completed a reverse merger with Nano Precision Medical Inc. which leaves the controversial visual prosthetics company holding 23% of the new company, now called Vivani Medical Inc. The deal brings together two unlikely partners, with Nano Precision targeting development of miniaturized, subdermal drug implants for chronic diseases such as diabetes, while Second Sight has focused on bringing its Orion visual prosthetic device to market. The company now trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol VANI.
“If you can see the future, you can change it. People say your eyes are the window to your soul, but the eyes are actually the window to your future health,” Toku Eyes Ltd. Founder and CEO Ehsan Vaghefi told BioWorld.
Envision Technologies BV’s latest artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smart glasses for the blind and visually impaired are designed to help with reading, scanning faces and navigating everyday tasks. This visual assistant was introduced at California State University Northridge (CSUN) 2022 Assistive Technology Conference. Envision has updated its AI-based platform and ecosystem with improved optical character recognition (OCR) and better text recognition with contextual intelligence.
It has been predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic would cause business disruption. Now, it has claimed a casualty with Second Sight Medical Products Inc., of Sylmar, Calif., which has been forced to wind down operations, citing the pandemic and the impact it will have on the company’s ability to secure financing. Second Sight, which makes the Argus II retinal prosthesis system, said that effective March 31, 84 of its 108 employees will be laid off.