UCSD - University of California - San Diego

09/30/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/30/2026 15:20

Can Eyewear Close the Hearing Gap

Published Date

September 30, 2026

Article Content

Eyeglasses have long helped people see more clearly. A startup based at the University of California San Diego Qualcomm Institute (QI) is now exploring whether they can also help people hear.

Aynak Inc., incubated in the QI Innovation Space, is recruiting San Diego-area participants to test its latest prototypes: AI-enabled hearing technology embedded in eyewear.

The company plans to distribute roughly 35 prototype pairs through local optical stores before the upcoming holidays, followed by a second distribution in January 2027.

"People will wear the glasses in typical environments where things are noisy, especially during the holidays," said Ramesh Chandrasekhar, founder and CEO of Aynak. "We'll get feedback on how they are doing."

Individuals can join the interest list at https://aynak.ai/pilot.html .

The company is taking aim at a widespread gap in hearing care. About 15% of U.S. adults report some trouble hearing, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Yet studies suggest that roughly three-quarters of them have never used hearing aids, while those who eventually adopt them may wait years to do so.

Chandrasekhar and his team hope to close that gap by combining the familiarity and design flexibility of eyewear with hearing technology that adapts to its surroundings while keeping sensitive information on the glasses rather than sending it to the cloud.

Taking the leap

Chandrasekhar brings both personal and professional insight to the problem.

During his 26 years at Qualcomm Inc., Chandrasekhar worked on augmented reality and other technologies that required fitting sophisticated electronics into small devices such as glasses. But it was an issue closer to home that changed his trajectory.

"My in-laws had been staying with us for a few months a year," said Chandrasekhar. "Somewhere around 2015, my mother-in-law started dealing with hearing loss. We were telling her, 'You can't hear; you're missing conversations,' and she was responding, 'No, no, I'm fine. I don't want hearing aids. I'm going to look old and disabled.'"

When she finally got her hearing tested and received hearing aids, she complained. Background sounds like running water or feet on a carpet were too loud, yet she still could not understand conversations in restaurants and other noisy environments. Despite the audiologist's reassurance that she would adjust to the new device, she did not.

The family tried another pair of hearing aids. Then another.

"I think she has about seven pairs now, and we spent about $15,000 altogether," said Chandrasekhar. "My mother-in-law is a very social person who used to talk to anybody, from 4 to 80 years old. But now she's completely backing out of conversations. By the end of the day, she has dinner. She loads up her plate, goes to a bedroom. That's not right."

Chandrasekhar's experience with augmented reality and miniaturized electronics led him to consider a different vehicle for hearing technology.

"People have no problem wearing glasses," he said. "There's no stigma associated with it. I thought, 'Maybe we use that vehicle to deliver hearing.'"

Chandrasekhar formed a startup to turn his idea into reality. He named it Aynak, the word for "glasses" in Hindi and Persian that also echoes the word for "your eyes" in Arabic.

Finding a home at the QI Innovation Space

To help shape Aynak's technology and strategy, Chandrasekhar sought advice from experts in hearing, neuroscience and digital health. Among them was Erik Viirre, director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and adjunct professor of neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Viirre, whose research has explored how the brain processes sensory information and how digital technologies can be used to improve health, agreed to advise the company.

He also encouraged Chandrasekhar to apply to the QI Innovation Space, which provides early-stage companies with workspace, high-tech facilities and access to UC San Diego's innovation ecosystem. QI is independent of Qualcomm Inc. and was named in acknowledgment of the company's philanthropic support between 2000 and 2012.

Unlike many incubators, the QI Innovation Space does not take an equity stake in participating startups. Companies also gain access to resources ranging from nanofabrication facilities to grant-writing assistance.

Aynak now has six employees working from QI, including two UC San Diego alumni (from the Jacobs School of Engineering and School of Social Sciences), along with two remote employees in the U.S. and a small team in India.

AI-driven technology

Chandrasekhar notes that Aynak is taking shape in a unique moment. Federal rules have expanded access to over-the-counter hearing aids, smart eyewear is gaining broader consumer acceptance, and advances in edge AI are making it possible to process complex sensory information in real time on smaller devices.

Together, these shifts create a favorable environment for Aynak's approach, which goes beyond simply housing hearing aids in eyeglasses. Instead, its system uses AI and multiple sensors to help determine what the wearer is trying to hear.

"What's different from other hearing aids is that we're multimodal," said Chandrasekhar. "We don't just have microphones. There is a vision sensor, but it's not to take pictures; the images never leave the glasses. It's to help you hear by adjusting to different contexts."

In other words, the glasses use sight and sound together, much as our own brains naturally do. A small vision sensor helps identify the person the wearer is looking at, while microphones embedded in the frame capture sounds from different directions. AI on the glasses combines those inputs in real time, making the voice the wearer wants to hear clearer while preserving awareness of surrounding sounds.

One of the biggest technical challenges is speed. Because users hear both amplified sound from the glasses and sound traveling naturally through the air, the two must arrive at nearly the same time. Even a slight processing delay can create a perceptible echo. That means Aynak's AI has only milliseconds to analyze the scene and process the sound-one reason the work is done on the glasses rather than in the cloud.

A smartphone app lets users tailor frequencies to their individual hearing profile.

Looking ahead

Rather than outsourcing the development of prototypes to a contract manufacturer, Aynak has chosen to remain hands-on.

"I don't like to give things to people turnkey because I feel like I miss the learning and the understanding in the process," said Chandrasekhar. "Our business is to license the technology, so we need to know how to make the sausage. We're taking on a lot of that work right now, but I feel like we'll come out of it in better shape."

The latest prototypes are designed to look and function like everyday eyewear. They come in two frame styles intended to appeal to a broad range of users. Longer-term, the company will lean into its core strengths in technology and forge partnerships with eyewear manufacturers with expertise in consumer fashion.

Chandrasekhar believes the technology will eventually be adapted for very different markets and needs, from lower-cost frames in countries where audiology services are scarce to new forms of sound delivery now being explored with research partners in Japan.

The platform could someday accommodate other sensors as well, but Chandrasekhar is wary of turning the glasses into a do-everything AI device. His goal is simpler: to create something people can put on without thinking about it that helps them remain connected to the people around them.

"My goal is to enable people to live independently for as long as possible," said Chandrasekhar.

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