LONDON, UK: Frontier IP’s portfolio company CamGraPhIC has raised £1.6 million through an equity funding round from existing and new investors.
The fundraising values University of Cambridge spin out CamGraPhIC at £5.6 million pre-money. It brings total funds raised by the Company to £3.4 million including the loan facility announced by the Group on 8 July 2021. Of the money in the equity funding round, £1.5 million was raised through investment platform Wealth Club.
Frontier IP holds a 20.8 per cent equity stake valued at £1.5 million, holds £1.0 million of loan notes, the terms of which were announced by Frontier IP on 8 July 2021, and has advanced £0.2m under loan agreements entered into in 2019 and 2020.
Proceeds from the funding round will be used to accelerate development and scale up of the CamGraPhIC’s graphene-based photonics technology for scalable, faster, cheaper and more energy efficient optical transceivers.
These have the potential to become a core enabling technology for the high-speed data and telecommunications needed for 5G networks and beyond. Current versions of the technology have indicated speeds of up to 100Gbps per lane, operation across multiple wavebands and very low energy loss. Their speed is about twice that achieved in laboratory conditions by equivalent technologies, while they consume at least 75 per cent less energy.
The underlying graphene-photonics technology, which has a host of further applications, is being developed under licence from the University of Cambridge.
Paul Mantle, Chief Executive Officer, CamGraPhIC, said: “CamGraPhIC has the potential to meet the challenge of two pressing global issues facing the data and telecommunication industries. Lab tests have underlined just how much quicker the technology is than those currently available – up to twice as fast. By cutting the amount of energy used by optical transceivers by at least 75 per cent, CamGraPhIC could play an important part in helping them reduce their carbon emissions.”
Neil Crabb, Frontier IP Chief Executive Officer, said: “We believe CamGraPhIC could transform data and telecommunications. The technology it is developing has the potential to become a core enabler of the high-speed networks of the future.”
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