SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA — Eyeglasses have helped people see more clearly for centuries. A startup incubated at the University of California San Diego Qualcomm Institute (QI) is exploring whether the same familiar form factor could also help more people hear.
Aynak Inc. is preparing to test its latest prototypes: AI-enabled hearing technology built directly into eyeglass frames. The company plans to distribute roughly 35 prototype pairs through optical stores in the San Diego area before the upcoming holiday season, followed by another distribution in January 2027.
Participants will wear the glasses in everyday environments, including the noisy social settings where hearing difficulties often become most apparent, and provide feedback on their experience.
The pilot comes as hearing assistance built into eyewear is attracting growing interest. Recent developments including Nuance Audio Plus OTC hearing glasses and Legato’s AI-powered hearing glasses suggest that eyewear is beginning to emerge as a distinct platform for hearing technology.
Addressing the Hearing Care Gap
The idea behind Aynak grew partly from founder and CEO Ramesh Chandrasekhar’s personal experience with hearing loss in his family.
Chandrasekhar spent 26 years at Qualcomm, where his work included augmented reality and technologies that required sophisticated electronics to fit into compact devices such as glasses. Around 2015, however, his mother-in-law began experiencing hearing difficulties.
According to Chandrasekhar, she initially resisted hearing aids because of how she associated them with aging and disability. When she eventually tried amplification, background sounds were bothersome and she continued to struggle with conversations in noisy places such as restaurants. His family ultimately tried several different hearing aids without finding a satisfactory solution.
The experience led Chandrasekhar to consider whether hearing assistance could be delivered through a device people already routinely wear.
“People have no problem wearing glasses,” Chandrasekhar told UC San Diego. “There’s no stigma associated with it. I thought, ‘Maybe we use that vehicle to deliver hearing.’”
He subsequently formed Aynak — a name derived from the word for “glasses” in Hindi and Persian — and began developing hearing technology around the eyewear form factor.
The UC San Diego-incubated startup Aynak is recruiting local participants to test its AI-enabled hearing assistance prototypes in real-world settings. Pictured from left: Aynak CEO Ramesh Chandrasekhar, COO Dan Luka, and Mechanical Engineer Iva Orlic reviewing a virtual model. Image credit: UCSD (Photo by Areli Alvarez, UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute)
The company is targeting a longstanding challenge in hearing healthcare. About 15% of U.S. adults report some difficulty hearing, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, yet many people with hearing difficulty have never used hearing aids or wait years before adopting them.
Cost and access can contribute to that gap, but so can perceived need, comfort, appearance and attitudes toward conventional hearing devices. Building hearing assistance into eyewear could offer another point of entry for people who are hesitant to wear a separate device in or behind the ear.
Using Sight and Sound Together
Aynak’s approach goes beyond simply placing microphones and speakers inside a pair of glasses.
The company describes its system as multimodal, meaning that it uses both visual and auditory information to determine what the wearer is trying to hear.
A small vision sensor helps identify the person the wearer is looking toward, while microphones embedded in the frames collect sounds arriving from different directions. AI running on the glasses combines those inputs in real time to make the intended speaker clearer while maintaining awareness of surrounding sounds.
The concept reflects something the human auditory system already does naturally: combining visual attention with acoustic information to determine which person or sound deserves attention.
Privacy is also being considered in the design. According to the company, the visual sensor is not intended to function as a conventional camera for capturing photographs or video. Visual information used by the system remains on the glasses rather than being sent to the cloud.
Milliseconds Matter
One of the more difficult engineering problems involves processing speed.
Unlike an occluding hearing device, Aynak’s open-ear design means users can hear sound arriving naturally through the air at the same time they hear processed sound from the glasses. If the amplified signal arrives even slightly later, the difference can be perceived as an echo.
That gives the system only milliseconds to analyze the acoustic and visual scene, determine which voice deserves emphasis and process the sound. Performing the AI processing directly on the glasses rather than in the cloud is intended to help minimize that delay.
A companion smartphone app allows users to tailor amplification frequencies to their individual hearing profile.
Hearing Glasses Move Back Into the Spotlight
The idea of combining eyeglasses and hearing assistance is not entirely new. Eyeglass hearing aids were commercially available decades ago, including products introduced in the 1950s. What has changed is the technology that can now fit inside a conventional-looking frame.
Miniaturized microphones, open-ear speakers, rechargeable batteries, wireless connectivity, digital signal processing and increasingly capable on-device AI are allowing companies to revisit the concept in substantially different ways.
EssilorLuxottica has already moved the form factor into the U.S. OTC hearing aid market. Its second-generation Nuance Audio Plus hearing glasses combine six microphones and open-ear speakers with directional processing designed to emphasize speech while reducing interference from surrounding noise. The system can be configured with prescription lenses and provides up to 10 hours of use.
The Nuance Audio platform has also begun generating clinical evidence. Research involving adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss found that the first-generation glasses improved speech recognition in noise and reduced listening effort. In one challenging test condition, average speech recognition increased from 34.2% without amplification to 63.2% while using the glasses, although researchers noted that additional field studies are needed to understand longer-term performance and real-world use.
Another approach is coming from Boston-based startup Legato, which unveiled AI-powered hearing glasses this summer after emerging from stealth with $12 million in funding. Rather than using visual information, Legato has focused on incorporating hearing assistance and AI processing into conventional-looking eyewear without requiring an in-ear or behind-the-ear device.
These approaches illustrate how broadly the idea of “hearing glasses” can be interpreted. The common element is the frame itself; the methods used to identify, process and deliver useful speech can differ considerably.
Smart Eyewear Creates a New Opportunity
Aynak is also developing its technology at a time when smart glasses are becoming more familiar to consumers.
Microphones, speakers, cameras, wireless connectivity and AI capabilities are increasingly being incorporated into eyewear for applications unrelated to hearing loss. That broader shift could make glasses a more natural platform for hearing assistance than they might have been even a few years ago.
At the same time, the eyewear format presents its own challenges. Consumers who do not already wear glasses may not want to adopt them. Frame comfort, weight, battery life, prescription changes and personal style all become part of the hearing-device experience. Open-ear sound delivery also presents different acoustic challenges than devices positioned directly in or near the ear canal.
For systems incorporating visual sensors, privacy and consumer acceptance will be additional considerations.
Testing the Concept in Everyday Life
Aynak’s upcoming pilot should provide the company with early information about how its approach performs outside controlled environments.
The latest prototypes are designed to resemble everyday eyewear and are available in two frame styles. Longer term, Aynak expects to focus on licensing its underlying technology and partnering with eyewear manufacturers that already have expertise in consumer fashion and frame design.
Chandrasekhar also sees potential for lower-cost versions in countries where access to audiology services is limited, as well as other forms of sound delivery being explored with research partners.
But the immediate goal is considerably simpler: determine whether hearing assistance can become something people put on as naturally as a pair of glasses.
“My goal is to enable people to live independently for as long as possible,” Chandrasekhar said.
Whether hearing glasses can meaningfully narrow the gap between the number of people experiencing hearing difficulty and those who adopt hearing technology remains an open question.
But the growing range of approaches — from directional OTC hearing glasses to AI-driven systems and now multimodal technology combining sight and sound — suggests eyewear is becoming an increasingly important testing ground for new approaches to hearing assistance.
Source: Ono M. Can Eyewear Close the Hearing Gap? UC San Diego Today. September 30, 2026.
