Kymeta Corporation has completed a US$50m third round of funding that will help the commercial roll-out of its metamaterials-based antenna for satellite communications.
The financing was led by existing investors Bill Gates, Lux Capital and Liberty…
Kymeta Corporation has completed a US$50m third round of funding that will help the commercial roll-out of its metamaterials-based antenna for satellite communications.
The financing was led by existing investors Bill Gates, Lux Capital and Liberty Global alongside new investors Osage University Partners and The Kresge Foundation.
The company is pioneering the use of patented metamaterials technology that dynamically steers antenna beams with no moving parts, resulting in flat, thin, light, and highly adaptable antennas and communication terminals.
Kymeta states that this capability opens numerous new opportunities in the satellite industry to provide new broadband mobile services and highly-flexible portable and fixed services to a wide range of applications.
Metamaterials Surface Antenna Technology (MSA-T) was initially conceived by David Smith at Duke University. It then further developed by intellectual property and patent specialist Intellectual Ventures (IV), which performed significant research and development to de-risk the technology.
In August 2012, following the completion of a US$12m funding round, Kymeta was subsequently spun-out from IV in order to commercialise the technology. IV granted an exclusive licence to Kymeta sell MSA-T-based products.
Kymeta is the second company to be spun out of IV since the invention capital company was founded in 2000. The first was TerraPower, a nuclear energy technology company that has also been backed by Bill Gates.
In March 2013, Kymeta announced that it had signed an agreement with Inmarsat to develop a new satellite antenna that will enable business jets of any size to access high-speed broadband connectivity globally through Inmarsat’s Global Xpress Ka-band service.
In April, Kymeta announced that it successfully closed a link with a Ka-band DTH satellite transporting high definition TV signals. Kymeta believes that this is the first time a metamaterials-based antenna has established a connection with a Ka-band satellite.
