IRIS Science completes over RMB 100M Series B+ financing, reshaping contact lens manufacturing with new quality productivity

Recently, IRIS Science, a globally leading research, development, and manufacturing platform for contact lenses, announced the completion of its over RMB 100 million Series B+ financing round. This round was exclusively led by Cenova Capital, a renowned investment institution, with CEC Capital Group serving as the exclusive financial advisor.

The contact lens industry carries the dual attributes of both consumer goods and medical devices, with high technological barriers in production. Currently, over 90% of brands in the market rely on contract manufacturing. Among them, daily disposable lenses have become the mainstream in the global market due to their health benefits and convenience, and are in a phase of rapid growth. However, given their extremely short wearing cycle, they impose exceptionally high requirements in terms of material biocompatibility, lens molding precision, and aseptic processing, making the technical difficulty and manufacturing challenges even more pronounced. For a long time, mainland China has been dominated by overseas manufacturers. The commissioning of IRIS Science's independently developed smart contact lens manufacturing facility marks the first time a local Chinese brand has achieved self-iterative capabilities in core materials, process technologies, and production equipment, reaching or even surpassing the standards of leading manufacturers in Europe, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, China, across multiple key technical indicators.

For a long time, the precision manufacturing of contact lenses has faced the core challenge of balancing quality, cost, and scale. Traditional production lines are highly dependent on manual labor, presenting bottlenecks in yield and consistency. Imported high-end automated production lines require significant investment, with core technologies remaining under foreign control. Meanwhile, existing integrated automated production lines in China, due to insufficient understanding of underlying processes, have seen operational outcomes constrained by team experience, failing to achieve ideal levels of quality and efficiency. Abandoning the conventional path of equipment integration, IRIS Science has embraced smart manufacturing and new quality productivity as its guiding direction, embarking on a journey of full-chain independent R&D—from the design of core precision injection molding and molding equipment, to the development of proprietary end-to-end manufacturing processes, and further to the highly coordinated integration of all equipment and control systems—establishing a comprehensive autonomous smart manufacturing system. The core advantage of this system lies in elevating overall equipment efficiency to a level unattainable by comparable facilities, fundamentally addressing the long-standing industry challenge of reconciling quality, efficiency, and production capacity.

Leveraging its robust manufacturing platform, IRIS Science has built an interdisciplinary R&D team that brings together professionals, including colleagues from Taiwan, China. Together, talents from both sides of the strait collaborate to tackle high-end manufacturing challenges, demonstrating the industrial value of cross-strait integrated development through tangible outcomes. Supported by this team, IRIS Science has accelerated parallel advancements in both consumer products and medical applications, with multiple initiatives transitioning from the R&D phase to commercial deployment. The independently developed silicone hydrogel lenses achieve an oxygen transmissibility (Dk/t) of over 160, which is five to ten times that of traditional hydrogel lenses, placing the oxygen permeability performance at the forefront of the industry. This breakthrough has surpassed the core performance threshold long dominated by international brands, completed commercial validation, and is poised for market launch. 

In the field of adolescent myopia management, IRIS Science has introduced the industry's first soft defocus lens that integrates both defocus theory and contrast theory, with product comfort and wearability having received clinical validation. In the area of dry eye disease treatment, the Oxi-free™ patented technology, jointly developed by IRIS Science, Moody, Tsinghua University, and the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine's ophthalmology research group, has completed preliminary clinical validation in free radical scavenging and inflammatory factor inhibition, effectively preventing and treating dry eye-related ocular conditions and breaking the vicious cycle of dry eye disease progression. The simultaneous advancement of these three product lines marks IRIS Science's ongoing evolution from a manufacturing platform into a provider of comprehensive eye health solutions across the full spectrum of scenarios.

Technical strength has ultimately been validated by market adoption. Several renowned contact lens brands, including Moody, Sigo Group, Lemonade, LaPeche, and Sweet Color, have established long-term, in-depth partnerships with IRIS Science. Additionally, IRIS Science's manufacturing capabilities have gained recognition in overseas markets—the company has entered into deep collaborations with clients in Japan and Southeast Asia, marking substantial progress in its international expansion.

As a key project of Fujian Province and Xiamen City, IRIS Science is based in Tong'an, Xiamen, and has grown rapidly with the continuous support of the Xiamen City and Tong'an District governments. To date, IRIS Science has been recognized as a National High-Tech Enterprise, holding a total of 18 patents and other intellectual property rights covering core areas such as equipment design, process technology, product technology, and intelligent control. Leveraging these assets, IRIS Science has successfully established Asia's leading fully automated "lights-out factory" for contact lenses. Built to Industry 4.0 standards, this facility translates proprietary intellectual property into new quality productivity, representing a concrete application of high technology in the precision manufacturing of medical devices.

In its pursuit of product quality, every technological choice at IRIS Science is driven by the user experience. The independently developed high-precision optical molds utilize a full molding process, with the mold core, male mold, and female mold all produced in-house. Through precision machining, mold tolerances are controlled within an extremely narrow range, fundamentally ensuring the accuracy and consistency of lens parameters. The self-designed magnetic levitation transport system employs four-point positioning and frictionless design, ensuring highly stable output of color lens patterns while significantly improving production cycle efficiency. The innovative light-curing technology effectively controls lens expansion coefficient and dimensional variation, bringing the molding precision of every lens to an industry-leading level. In quality control, IRIS Science has implemented end-to-end automated optical inspection (AOI), covering ten process steps and identifying over 30 types of defects. Each lens is assigned a unique traceability code, enabling full-chain traceability from production to distribution.

This marks the first time China's local supply chain has established a complete set of independent capabilities encompassing R&D innovation, core processes, and system integration. It provides both Chinese and international brands with a truly local option when seeking top-tier manufacturing partners. The manufacturing and R&D capabilities represented by IRIS Science are redefining the position of China's contact lens supply chain in the global market.