Newport Beach entrepreneur Robert Grant says he’s invented “the next leap” in intraocular technologies—a lens that can be a camera inside an eye.
Grant, who received two patents for his “third eye” in 2017, started Ceyeber in 2021 to commercialize the product.
“It’s a little lens that goes inside your eye,” Grant told the Business Journal during an interview at his office. “That’s a camera right in the center.
“It takes over your vision. It’s like a heads-up display inside your eye. The point is that you can do everything that your iPhone does. You can relive your memories.”
Grant has been a longtime entrepreneur who founded Strathspey Crown LLC, which has a portfolio of 17 companies that employ more than 1,000. Among his successes are Evolus Inc., which has risen to a $521 million market cap by selling a Botox-like injection to remove wrinkles (Nasdaq: EOLS), and Alphaeon Credit Inc., the nation’s second-largest lender in the healthcare consumer space. He was also previously a president at Allergan Medical and CEO of Bausch and Lomb Surgical.
Grant has found believers among eye surgeons who sit on Ceyeber’s seven-member board of advisors, including Scott Perkins, who has performed more than 100,000 cataract surgeries and 15,000 LASIK procedures.
“The Ceyeber intraocular lens technology promises to significantly advance the way we perceive and interact with the world,” Dr. Richard Lindstrom, a Ceyeber board member and founder and surgeon at Minnesota Eye Consultants, said in a statement.
Blindness Cure
The Ceyeber Third Eye could be a solution for macular degeneration and preventing blindness, Grant said.
The idea for the third eye is like how some cars display information like speedometers or maps on their windshields, Grant said.
In fact, he’s planning on introducing glasses that can project information onto their lenses. He noted giant tech companies like Apple, Google and Meta are trying out similar technologies. He doesn’t envision competing with them, but rather licensing out the technology since getting through clinical trials and FDA approval “is not their wheelhouse.
“We own all the IP on this,” Grant said. “We’re experts in intraocular lenses. They’re not.”
He plans to introduce the first prototype in June, followed by four years of clinical trials and then maybe commercialization in 2028.
The lens can be installed in a five-minute procedure like cataract surgery. Its energy comes from tape placed on eyelids that has a conductive coil in it and sends energy to the lens.
“There’s no battery—the lens is powered by blinking,” he said.
It can be turned off by removing the tape or blinking. The lens can also be easily removed by doctors, he predicted.
It can connect through Bluetooth.
“Instead of picking up your cell phone, just open your eyes. Blink twice and it will pull up a screen.”
Grant envisions an early experiment of implanting the “third” eye inside a pig.
“It could stream everything the pig is seeing to YouTube,” he said. “That’s what coming.”
