The EU-Startups Podcast | Interview with Cornel Amariei, CEO and founder of .lumen

What if technology could give blind people the freedom of a guide dog – without the waitlists, the cost, or the care requirements? In this episode, we sit down with Cornel Amariei, CEO and founder of .lumen, the Romanian startup building smart glasses that help blind and visually impaired people navigate the world independently.

Cornel’s story starts at home. Born into a family where both parents live with locomotor disabilities and his sister with a mental disability, he saw firsthand how much technology can change a life – and how little of it actually exists for people with disabilities.

He was programming at seven, building robots at thirteen, and running profitable companies before finishing high school, before eventually leading innovation in autonomous driving at Continental Automotive Systems. In 2020, he channeled all of that into .lumen, a company with one mission: replicate the benefits of a guide dog for the millions of people who can never have one.

In this conversation, we go deep on the technology itself – how the glasses perceive the environment in 3D, plan safe paths, and translate the world into something a blind user can navigate confidently. Cornel explains exactly where the guide dog comparison holds up and where it breaks down, what blind users have taught his team of engineers and scientists, and what his own hands-on contribution to the product has been.

We also talk candidly about the transition from research project to manufacturable product, why Romania’s DeepTech ecosystem still faces barriers, and what needs to happen for assisted mobility technology to become truly mainstream.