eye-care
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The Eye Doctor's Six-Portal Problem
Anagram began by making out-of-network vision claims less painful. Then it discovered the front desk had a bigger problem: finding the plan, explaining the benefit, and getting paid at all.
Nikon Spent a Century Perfecting Light. Now It Is Betting the Company on Everything Except Cameras.
The camera brand your grandparents trusted now etches microchips, prints jet parts in metal, and photographs living cells. In 2026 that pivot is running at a loss - and Nikon says that is the point.
The Eye Drop That Refuses to Blink Away
A serial dry-eye entrepreneur who already sold one eye-care company to Johnson & Johnson is betting that the fix for dry eye is not a better drop - it is a drop that simply stays put.
eyewa
eyewa is the Middle East's largest omnichannel eyewear retailer, selling prescription glasses, sunglasses, blue light glasses and contact lenses through its e-commerce platform, mobile app and a growing network of physical stores across the GCC. Founded in Dubai in 2017 by former Bain consultants Anass Boumediene and Mehdi Oudghiri, the company pairs affordable in-house brands with technology like AI-powered virtual try-on, and reached roughly 150 stores before raising a $100M Series C led by General Atlantic in late 2024 to fund a 100-store expansion.
VSP Vision
VSP Vision is the largest not-for-profit vision benefits and eye care company in the United States, founded in 1955 by a group of Northern California optometrists who pioneered the idea of prepaid vision insurance. Headquartered in Rancho Cordova, California, VSP now operates a vertically integrated portfolio spanning vision insurance, eyewear brands (Marchon, Altair, Marcolin), lens technology (VSP Optics), retail (Visionworks, Eyeconic), and practice-management software (Eyefinity). Backed by roughly 85 million members and a network of tens of thousands of independent eye doctors, the company frames its mission as empowering human potential through sight, and funds one of the industry's largest charitable arms, VSP Eyes of Hope.
Barti
Barti builds an AI-powered electronic health record and practice management platform built specifically for eye care providers, replacing the patchwork of legacy tools optometry and ophthalmology practices use for charting, scheduling, billing, phones and payments with a single connected system.
PlenOptika
PlenOptika is a Cambridge, Massachusetts medical device company that makes QuickSee, a handheld autorefractor that measures a person's eyeglass prescription in about ten seconds using wavefront aberrometry and machine-learning algorithms. Spun out of the Madrid-MIT M+Vision fellowship in 2014, the company set out to close the gap on uncorrected refractive error, a problem affecting more than a billion people worldwide. Its portable, clinic-quality device has been used by vision professionals and NGOs on over 5 million patients in more than 45 countries - and even flew aboard SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission as the first handheld autorefraction device used in space.
Avisi Technologies
Avisi Technologies is a clinical-stage ophthalmic medical device company building VisiPlate, an ultrathin, nanotechnology-enabled aqueous shunt that drains excess fluid from the eye to lower pressure in glaucoma patients. Spun out of the University of Pennsylvania's Y-Prize program in 2017, the company is advancing VisiPlate through the FDA-cleared SAPPHIRE pivotal trial and has raised roughly $21.7M to date, including a $10.7M Series A in February 2026.
Intalight
Intalight is a US-based ophthalmic imaging company (the international brand of SVision Imaging / 视微影像, Luoyang, China) that builds high-speed swept-source OCT and OCT-angiography systems. Its flagship DREAM OCT platform images the whole eye in a single ultra-widefield scan, combining deep retinal penetration, anterior-segment imaging, biometry, and AI-driven segmentation for clinicians and researchers worldwide.
ViaLase, Inc.
ViaLase, Inc. is a clinical-stage medical technology company in Aliso Viejo, California building the first femtosecond laser designed to treat primary open-angle glaucoma without cutting into the eye. Its ViaLuxe Laser System pairs micron-level, high-definition imaging with a femtosecond laser to perform a noninvasive, image-guided trabeculotomy - branded FLigHT - that creates a drainage channel through the trabecular meshwork to lower intraocular pressure. Founded in 2019 by femtosecond-laser pioneer Tibor Juhasz, the company has raised more than $115 million, earned a CE Mark in Europe, and begun a U.S. IDE clinical trial.
Shawn O'Neil
Shawn O'Neil is the CEO of ViaLase, a clinical-stage medtech company building FLIGHT, an incision-free femtosecond laser procedure for glaucoma. He spent more than two decades at Alcon rising to head of sales and marketing for surgical glaucoma, then ran commercial at Sight Sciences before joining ViaLase as Chief Commercial Officer and stepping up to CEO in July 2025. His career has been a running tour of the products that reshaped eye surgery: EX-PRESS, LenSx, CyPass, OMNI, TearCare, and now a laser that treats glaucoma without ever touching the eye with a blade.
Kathy Chen
Kathy Chen is a Palo Alto-based entrepreneur and Co-founder of East Optical USA, the North American arm of East Optical, a family-owned Chinese optical lens manufacturer established in 1982. She has built the company's presence across North America, launching the innovative MyoPro myopia management spectacle lens in Canada and expanding into international markets. A regular on the optical industry conference circuit, she has spoken at Vision Expo West in Las Vegas on a Main Stage panel about the Future of Opticianry, attended the Myopia Summit in Toronto, and represented East Optical at Franja 2025 in Bogotá, Colombia.