Fondazione Chips-IT and EssilorLuxottica announce collaboration on custom IC design for smart eyewear
NEWS
Fondazione Chips-IT and EssilorLuxottica have announced a strategic collaboration aimed at supporting the development of custom integrated circuits (ASICs) for next-generation smart eyewear.
The partnership brings together EssilorLuxottica’s system-level vision and product leadership in smart glasses with Chips-IT’s expertise in advanced IC design, semiconductor system integration, and industrial technology transfer. The collaboration will focus on enabling EssilorLuxottica’s evolution as a fabless semiconductor actor, strengthening its internal capabilities in custom chip design for wearable and edge-AI applications.
Smart eyewear represents one of the most demanding application domains for semiconductor innovation, requiring extreme optimization across power consumption, form factor, sensing, connectivity, and on-device intelligence. Custom ASICs are a key enabler to meet these constraints while ensuring scalability and product differentiation.
Within this collaboration, Chips-IT will support EssilorLuxottica across multiple dimensions, including:
- Definition of ASIC design requirements aligned with system-level and product needs
- Architecture exploration and design methodologies for low-power, highly integrated solutions
- Access to advanced design expertise, tools, and ecosystem partners within the European semiconductor landscape
- Technology transfer and co-development pathways bridging research and industrial deployment
The collaboration is fully aligned with national and communitarian objectives of reinforcing Europe’s capacity to design application-specific semiconductors for strategic markets such as wearables, edge computing, and AI-enabled devices.
“Smart eyewear sits at the intersection of microelectronics, system integration and user-centric design. This collaboration demonstrates how Chips-IT can support industrial leaders in developing custom semiconductor solutions that are critical to future products,” said Carlo Reita, Director of Fondazione Chips-IT.
For Chips-IT, the collaboration represents a concrete example of its mission to enable industrially relevant semiconductor design in Italy, supporting companies through collaborative development, access to expertise, and structured technology transfer.
Check EssilorLuxottica press release here.