Intel Capital Nears Half Billion Dollars in 2015 Investment

Intel Capital, Intel Corporation’s global investment and M&A organization, announced today at the Intel Capital Global Summit new investments totaling more than $22 million in 10 startups. From disruptive, new wireless charging solutions (Chargifi*) to powerful new ways to digitally model the human body (Body Labs*) and more, the companies joining Intel Capital’s portfolio are trailblazing disruptive innovation across a wide range of technologies.

“With today’s announcement, we’re on track to invest more than $500 million in startups in 2015,” said Wendell Brooks, Intel corporate vice president and incoming president of Intel Capital. “Together with another robust group of exits, we’re poised for one of the organization’s strongest years ever.”  

Today’s announcement was made as the annual Intel Capital Global Summit kicked off in San Diego. Now in its 16th year, the venture capital industry’s premier networking event hosts more than 1,000 founders, CEOs, innovators and change-makers for two days of company building, networking, learning and inspiration.

 “What sets Intel Capital apart is the way our global network drives innovation across the technology spectrum,” said Arvind Sodhani, Intel executive vice president and outgoing president of Intel Capital. “As I prepare to retire after a 35-year career at Intel, I’m proud to say we’ve built Intel Capital into one of the largest, most successful and most influential venture investment groups on the planet.”

In his opening keynote, Sodhani presented the first-ever Intel Capital Entrepreneur of the Year Award to Kevin Reid and Rodney Rogers, co-founders of Virtustream. This award recognizes their ability to build a startup from the garage to a $1.2 billion exit in less than six years.

More details on the new investments, which hail from five countries:

New Communications 

FreedomPop* (Los Angeles, California, U.S.) provides disruptive mobile services so no one is left off the “connected grid.” Launched in 2012, FreedomPop is rewriting the rules of the American telecoms industry, offering consumers access to free high-speed Internet and mobile phone services nationwide.

LISNR* (Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.) is the creator of Smart Tones, a new communication protocol that sends data over audio using a high-frequency, inaudible technology. It is a digital sound file that turns any speaker or piece of media into a beacon, working seamlessly across physical and digital spaces more effectively than all current solutions in the marketplace, most notably Bluetooth and traditional ACR. LISNR is the latest portfolio company to receive an investment from Intel Capital’s groundbreaking $125 million Diversity Fund.

Sckipio* (Ramat Gan, Israel), the leader in G.fast modems, is the first company to announce and ship commercial G.fast chipsets that will deliver up to 1Gbp/s broadband the last mile to the home over existing copper wiring.

what3words* (London, United Kingdom) is a multi-award-winning addressing platform that allows people to find and communicate a location more accurately, more easily and with less ambiguity than GPS or postcodes (which don’t exist in many countries). what3words works across platforms, can be easily integrated into other applications and presents huge efficiency opportunities for businesses.

Technology around Me

Body Labs (New York, New York, U.S.) collects, digitizes and organizes all of the data and information related to human body shape, pose and motion. Its mission is to transform the human body into a digital platform upon and around which goods and services can be designed, produced, bought and sold.

Microprogram Information* (Taichung, Taiwan) is an Internet of Things solution and service provider that provides turnkey hardware and software solutions and backend information management services for rental bicycles, taxi fleets, mobile point-of-sale systems and others. The company has strengths in e-payment service flow, embedded system integration, RFID/MiFARE familiarity and service support experiences.

Perfant Technology* (Beijing, China) develops imaging and video technologies for artificial intelligence, machine vision, 3-D reconstruction and virtual reality. Perfant’s new panoramic camera, eyesir, can be used in tourism, aviation, virtual reality, smart homes, real estate, media, weddings, sports and various events.

Old Problems, New Solutions

Chargifi (London, United Kingdom) is a wireless charging network using power as a platform for enhancing people’s everyday experiences. From coffee shops to hotels, restaurants, offices and airports, “Chargifi Spots” form an intelligent network giving people access to power for mobile devices where and when they need it most.

KMLabs* (Boulder, Colorado, U.S.) is a leading manufacturer of compact, high-performance, ultrafast advanced laser systems for research and industrial applications, including multi-photon imaging, spectroscopy, OCT, THz-generation, CEP, micro- machining and attosecond, coherent soft X-Ray and EUV pulse generation. It is the only commercial supplier of a coherent "tabletop x-ray laser" light source. The company's femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second) laser systems and Ti:sapphire lasers offer unprecedented new solutions for industrial metrology, imaging and materials characterization.

Prieto Battery* (Fort Collins, Colorado, U.S.) is a 3-D advanced battery provider focused on commercializing a patented Lithium-ion battery technology that delivers transformational performance at a competitive cost using non-toxic materials with the ability to customize shapes. 

In addition, Intel Capital announced that Parallel Machines*, an early stage company focused on providing highly optimized environments for advancing predictive analytics and machine learning, has joined its portfolio. The company, which has offices in Tel Aviv, Boston, California and Seattle, was founded in 2014 by renowned entrepreneurs with backgrounds in distributed computing, system programming, machine learning and mathematical statistics. 

For the first time, this year’s Global Summit also offered a showcase for existing Intel Capital portfolio companies to unveil new products. 

• Altia Systems* demonstrated PanaCast, the first personal panoramic 4K video experience for Intel® Unite™, with a 180-degree field of view that enables participants to “look around” the live video with simple touch gestures.
• Avogy*, maker of the Zolt Laptop Charger Plus – which is smaller and lighter than traditional, heavy “brick” chargers and allows users to simultaneously charge their laptop and two additional mobile devices – announced the device will be available on Nov. 17.
• Braigo Labs*, founded by 13-year-old Shubham Banerjee, one of the youngest entrepreneurs in the world, demonstrated the capabilities of its Intel® Edison on-chip Braille transcription technology.
• Fortscale*, a leader in user behavior analytics for enterprise security, showcased Fortscale 2.0, an upgrade of its award-winning solution that results in an unparalleled ability to target and eliminate insider threats.
• Two Bit Circus*, founded by the son of Silicon Valley legend Nolan Bushnell to inspire the next generation of innovators through high-tech entertainment experiences, demonstrated an interactive installation utilizing Intel® RealSense™ technology.

For details on these new products, visit the Intel newsroom at www.intel.com/newsroom/globalsummit. 

This year’s invite-only event features distinguished speakers, including Beth Comstock, vice chair of GE* and president and CEO of GE Business Innovations; Tom Reilly, CEO of Cloudera*; and Padmasree Warrior, strategic advisor to Cisco*. 

“As all of these exciting investments and new products show, Intel Capital is dedicated to seeking out disruptive innovation around the globe and helping the entrepreneurs behind it achieve new heights,” Brooks concluded. “Leveraging the power of Intel’s worldwide technology footprint is an advantage no other venture investor can offer at such scale.”