Cornel Amariei’s story started in a little Romanian town with a history of survival and grit. He was born into a family that had its share of disabilities. His parents, survivors of polio, had met in a sanatorium, and their lives were a tribute to survivorship. His sister, nephews, and cousins struggled with mental and physical challenges, yet Amariei was untouched by these ailments. Instead, he bore the weight of responsibility, growing up as the family’s pillar of support.
Life was hard, but his family’s unrelenting work ethic inspired him. His parents, despite their disabilities, worked long hours to provide for their children. By the time he was three years old, Amariei was running errands and contributing to the household. This instilled a belief in him from an early age that for survival, ingenuity was required as much as effort. At seven, he was learning to program, and by fourteen, he had started businesses to help keep food on the family table. These ventures not only paid for his university education but also fueled his entrepreneurial spirit.
Amariei went to Germany to study computer science and electrical engineering. It was then, during one night’s conversation with his friend, that the idea of “glasses for the blind” was born. When he researched the concept, the numbers astounded him: over 42 million blind people worldwide, 300 million visually impaired. The guide dog was the only real solution available, and at roughly $28,000 per dog, it served fewer than 30,000 people worldwide annually. The scale of unmet need was overwhelming, and Cornel was determined to change that.
Years later, after having had a very successful corporate career dealing with the most current technologies including self-driving cars, Amariei went back to his roots. He started Lumen in Romania during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, then one of the most uninnovative European countries by a long shot. Against all the odds, he was driven by a dream: to create a wearble device which would work for pedestrians just like the self-driving car does, so that people with blindness could move in the world without any help.
Lumen’s device, costing between $5,000 and $10,000 depending on subsidies, is a fraction of the lifetime cost of a guide dog. It uses advanced AI and sensors to guide users through complex environments much like a self-driving car but scaled to the human experience. The device allows users to navigate sidewalks, cross streets, and even locate specific items in a store. For example, a blind person using Lumen could independently identify and reach the milk aisle in a supermarket—a feat previously unimaginable.
That was an ambitious project to fund. Amariei raised more than $10 million from angel investors, including a former Formula 1 driver, and grants from the European Innovation Council-only for the first time in Romania. The state-of-the-art R&D facilities of the startup have expanded to more than 1,200 square meters, boasting sophisticated laboratories where a team of 50 engineers and researchers continue to work on improving the product.
Integral to Lumen’s technological progress has been its partnership with AWS (Amazon Web Services). AWS provides the robust cloud infrastructure that powers Lumen’s AI-driven systems, enabling scalable, real-time processing of sensor data. This integration ensures the seamless performance and reliability of the device—essential for applications where split-second decisions can impact user safety. AWS’s support has also facilitated rapid iteration cycles, allowing Lumen’s engineers to test and implement improvements at an accelerated pace.
Amariei’s vision is not to sell devices but to break paradigms. Guide dogs-a solution that is many thousands of years old-could serve only a tiny portion of the population. Lumen hopes to ship tens of thousands of devices in the next few years and, quite literally, make independent mobility possible for the blind around the world. The idealistic benchmark is clear: the moment Lumen ships more devices annually than there are guide dogs in use globally, it will be a historic shift.
Beyond the numbers and technology, Amariei’s work is deeply personal. Growing up surrounded by disabilities, he knows what a daily grind it is for people with impairments. His device does not restore sight but offers something just as transformative: freedom, confidence, and the ability to live a fuller life. The first blind person to independently hike using Lumen’s device, or the first to navigate a supermarket solo, represents not just a technological achievement but a profound human triumph.
For Amariei, Lumen is not just a company but a tribute to resilience, a bridge between technology and empathy, an invitation to the world to think differently about what’s possible. Mixing entrepreneurial drive with a heartfelt mission, he is proving that innovation can lighten lives one step at a time.
