Zepsor Technologies, a developer of zero-power infrared sensors, is announcing that the company has been accepted into the Silicon Catalyst incubator, the world’s only incubator focused exclusively on accelerating semiconductor solutions. Zepsor has designed and demonstrated a unique sensing capability that detects the thermal energy generated from a person, and then activates itself and other electronics without requiring any idle power. This sensing technology can reduce the battery consumption of many common products and provide a ten-fold improvement in the time between battery charge or battery replacement for many applications.
In January 2023, the Zepsor team was awarded a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant for $1.8 million over a 3-year development project. In addition to this non-dilutive funding from DARPA, Zepsor also received an additional equity investment from Silicon Catalyst Angels and other seed-stage investors. The combination of these funds, and earlier ARPA-E and DHS grants amount to a total of $3M raised from grants and equity investments. “Securing this initial funding and engaging with Silicon Catalyst creates a strong platform for the Zepsor product development and commercialization,” said Dr. Matteo Rinaldi, CEO and co-founder of Zepsor Technologies. “We anticipate an exciting year as we start sampling our Zero-Power infrared sensors for proximity and presence detection.”
Zepsor Technologies was founded at the Northeastern University SMART Center and incorporated in 2021 to commercialize a family of sensors capable of activating themselves upon the presence of specific infrared-emitting targets without consuming any power in standby. The name “Zepsor” stands for Zero-Power Sensors®, the primary characteristic of their products. The founding team of Dr. Matteo Rinaldi, and Dr. Zhenyun Qian, have located the company in the Boston Massachusetts area to take advantage of the engineering and manufacturing resources associated with the region. Zepsor has identified applications for the technology in a variety of “Smart City” initiatives, building controls and touchless sensing for industrial and medical.
“The Zepsor infrared sensor devices make the world more energy efficient and reduce the waste of battery materials which are becoming a global concern,” said Paul Pickering, Managing Partner at Silicon Catalyst. “The deployment of this technology is urgent, and Silicon Catalyst is pleased to support the acceleration of the product development.”