Takcapital's Lucyd surpasses smart eyewear crowdfunding goal

Tekcapital updated the market on its portfolio smart eyewear and wearable software company Lucyd on Wednesday, reporting that it had surpassed its $0.4m (£0.29m) crowdfund goal for its subsidiary Innovative Eyewear.

The AIM-traded firm said that, due to ongoing investor interest, Lucyd was continuing to raise up to $0.6m.

Additionally, it announced the launch of ‘Lucyd Lyte’, which it described as technology-enhanced prescription eyewear “for active lifestyles”.

It said the product would “look and feel” like designer fashion frames, but would allow wearers to play music, take phone calls and use their smartphone's assistant, while maintaining situational awareness with open-ear technology.

“It's not just about expanding our technology, but having the technology seamlessly connect to ourselves,” said Lucyd co-founder and chief executive officer Harrison Gross.

“The new Lucyd Lyte collection is style leading, comfortable to wear all day, affordable and will work with our forthcoming ‘Vyrb’ application, bringing true voice interaction to select social media platforms.”

Tekcapital said that to date, Lucyd had sold more than 2,000 pairs of glasses, adding that it believed the new Lyte line had the potential for mass-market adoption due to its design, form-factor and pricing.

Proceeds from the crowdfund were being used to develop the Lyte line and the Vyrb social media application.

Tekcapital currently owns 100% of the share capital of Lucyd, and 89.7% of its subsidiary Innovative Eyewear.

At 0944 GMT, shares in Tekcapital were up 0.91% at 16.65p.