Stan Larroque vividly remembers the day in 2014 when he put an Oculus Rift DK2 on his head, a prototype of a still rudimentary virtual reality headset. This young climbing enthusiast is just 20 years old. The fascination for the object is immediate. “It’s the future,” he imagines. Like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or the American Palmer Luckey, the creator of Oculus glasses (start-up bought by Facebook in 2014), he quickly left school and dropped his training. engineer in Grenoble. With two or three components and a few bits of string, Stan builds his own immersive experiences. A friend of the Larroque family, Guillaume Gelée attended the first demonstrations in person. “Originally, he knew nothing about it. But he quickly became an expert on the subject. This technology seemed easy for him”, comments this four-star general, former head of the Rafale program for the Air Force. . “Amazed”, the soldier decides to take the boy under his wing, in order to help him develop a helmet from A to Z. A daring bet that only the big names in tech are then ready to take up. The future Meta, Facebook, in particular, hits hard by offering Oculus. Stan Larroque rushes off to California to closely observe the beginnings of this nascent sector.
Paris. August 2023. Aged 29 today, the entrepreneur opens the doors of his offices and workshop, located in the 19th arrondissement of the capital. A helmet in hand and a smile on your face. The “R1” is the very first model of his young company, Lynx. Production began near Shanghai, China earlier this month. “The order book is full”, proudly assures the boss, who now manages around thirty employees in various and varied fields, from design to electronics, via software. A little over 5,000 pieces will be produced initially. A drop of water compared to the 20 million units sold so far of Meta’s flagship helmet, the Quest. Not to mention those sold by Microsoft and by the Asian brands Samsung, HTC or Pico, which have set foot in this still young industry, but which has become very competitive after the Covid. Whatever, Stan Larroque went to the end of his idea.
“Miracle”
First, that of designing a so-called “mixed” reality headset. In addition to the immersion promised by virtual reality (VR), the business leader believes in the “superpowers” of augmented reality (AR). Using cameras located on the front of the device and sensors, this consists of bringing virtual elements into a real environment and allowing their manipulation. An example: display the Solar System and pinch the planets with your fingers to move them. With Guillaume Gelée, before the Covid crisis, they imagine several concrete use cases in industry, health or defense, for training or simulation purposes. Relations are forged with Inserm, SNCF and other national flagships. The recent announcement of the release of the mixed reality headset, AR and VR Apple Vision pro, scheduled for 2024 by the apple firm, reassures them. “This news validates our technological positioning on augmented reality. An ecosystem will be born. And it is a signal sent to the financial world. If Apple is committed, it is because there is a market worth several billion euros, at a minimum,” said Stan Larroque. 51 billion very precisely, by 2030, anticipates the analysis company GlobalData.
It still remained to produce said helmet. “The specifications are thicker than those of a state-of-the-art iPhone. There are more than 300 components to assemble and fit on anyone’s head with a sturdy frame,” explains the entrepreneur. The American Qualcomm, which equips a good part of the sector, has agreed to supply it with chips, the sinews of war. “The complexity of the optics and the increasing miniaturization of the elements are two very difficult challenges to solve”, explains Henri Seydoux, director of the drone manufacturer Parrot, installed a stone’s throw from the offices of Lynx. So much so that no other French or European manufacturer – apart from Varjo, in Finland – has tried it yet.
Funding for such a project took a long time to emerge. A Kickstarter campaign, launched in 2021, allows the young boss to recover 725,000 euros and build a small customer base. Before a fundraising of 4 million euros allows it to think bigger, in mid-2022. In total, more than 6 million euros have been gleaned here and there to develop the R1. Not much, again, in view of the colossal sums gathered across the Atlantic: more than 10 billion euros at Meta, both for equipment and for its universe, the metaverse. Not to mention the 17,000 employees in its division. About the release of the R1, Stan Larroque likes to speak of a “miracle”.
The preserve of Gafam?
Its teams are already working on the next model, expected at the end of 2024. Lynx needs 30 million euros in order to continue the adventure, generate more volume, go and tickle the “big guys”, Meta and the others. And why not, one day, make your helmet in France, like Crosscall in smartphones? The R1 is a great showcase for Lynx. But venture capitalists haven’t become any easier to convince. Stan Larroque receives many negative responses. The market for consumer headsets is dominated by Asians and Americans, and the one for businesses, on which Lynx is particularly betting, is too small, writes a first funder. Another fund sends him an even more laconic response: helmets are simply “the preserve of Gafam”. Point.
Meta does plan to launch its own mixed reality headset, the Meta Quest 3, this fall. Apple, after a first very high-end device, sold for 3,500 dollars, should quickly expand its range, as for smartphones or connected watches, and approach the Lynx R1, marketed between 849 and 1,299 euros, in versions basic or business. Samsung is also thinking about it. As for the Chinese Pico, it benefits from the massive financial support of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. For Henri Seydoux, the future of Lynx lies outside the consumer segment. “His project is mature, it’s up to him not to scatter.” The businessman specifies: “We cannot accept that for high-tech products, the industry of the 21st century, there are only two solutions: Asian or American.”
Stan Larroque also defends another vision, “outside Silicon Valley”, of a customizable, repairable helmet, equipped with an ecosystem as open as possible to developers, in order to give free rein to their imagination. He sees with a good eye the various European and French plans to support the metaverse, in which he could grab some credits, and play the “sovereignty” card. In the meantime, this first version of the helmet allows him to gain experience. And a lot of confidence. The American Magazine Forbes recently placed him among the 30 profiles under 30 to follow in Europe in the field of technologies. His mentors are full of praise for him. “He has extraordinary human and intellectual capacities”, salutes the former fighter pilot Guillaume Gelée. “I’ve never met someone as determined as Stan,” says Henri Seydoux. A precocious talent just waiting to hatch.