CHARLOTTE — Charlotte entrepreneur Akmal Nazir spent years watching the augmented reality industry pass him by. His astigmatism gave him headaches, blurring and misaligning screens every time he tried on a pair of smart glasses.
So two years ago, the Charlotte-area teenager started sketching his own pair instead. He asked a classmate, Ajith Varikuti, for help designing the frames.
“I started developing AR specifically because I saw a gap in what companies offered and what was accessible to certain groups of people,” Nazir said.
That side project has grown into Halion Technologies, a Charlotte startup building augmented reality glasses called Iris. Nazir, the company’s CEO, founded the business and now works on its electrical systems. Three of his co-founders are all rising or recent high school seniors.
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