PsiKick, the company pioneering wireless, batteryless Internet of
Things (IoT) systems, today announced it has changed its name to
Everactive and closed a $30 million funding round, led by Future Fund
and joined by new investors Blue Bear Capital and ABB Technology
Ventures, alongside existing investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA)
and Osage University Partners. The company has raised $63 million to
date.
“Removing the need for batteries solves one of the key limitations of
the IoT and represents a fundamental paradigm shift, allowing our
customers to deploy wireless sensors at scale and gain access to new,
high-value data-driven insights,” said Bob Nunn, CEO of Everactive.
“Over the last 18 months Everactive has productized our ultra-low-power
silicon technology and developed a compelling go-to-market strategy that
is now driving rapid customer adoption. Everactive will use the proceeds
from the new round to meet the growing customer demand for our existing
and future products.”
The implications of batteryless sensing are vast, enabling an explosion
of connected data from the physical world that stands to dwarf today’s
online data repositories, which are comprised primarily of
user-generated, digitally native data (i.e., our collective web
activity).
Everactive’s initial target market is the industrial sector, where
collecting and analyzing data on physical equipment and infrastructure
can have a profound and measurable impact—serving to reduce downtime,
cut maintenance costs, improve safety and environmental impact, as well
as boost overall efficiency.
Grant Allen, Head of Technology Ventures at ABB, says, “We have long
been aware of the value of wireless sensing for condition monitoring and
predictive maintenance but, in many environments, the logistics and
economics of battery-powered sensors have not made sense. Everactive
opens up a range of possibilities for truly maintenance-free sensing at
broad scale and ABB is excited to deepen our partnership and introduce
Everactive’s monitoring solutions to our customers.”
In late 2018, Everactive launched its first product, Steam Trap Monitor
(STM), which is designed to continuously monitor the pervasive
industrial and district energy steam trap in order to determine whether
or not the trap has failed so that maintenance personnel can act to
minimize costly energy waste and safety concerns. The batteryless
approach to this multi-billion-dollar market has proven successful with
customers. Gary Binstock, Supply Chain Innovation Director at
Colgate-Palmolive, noted that, “Everactive batteryless sensors are
extremely promising and will certainly be important to our business.
We’ve already thought up a number of use cases and will hopefully
evaluate many more.”
Currently in small-scale deployments, the company’s latest products
include a Machine Health Monitor that analyzes vibration on rotating
equipment, such as industrial motors, pumps, and fans. Everactive also
offers a Flare System Monitor that mitigates the length and costs of
flaring events in refineries. “The data insights derived from
Everactive’s maintenance-free monitoring solutions will quantifiably
improve companies’ asset optimization, operational efficiency, and
environmental footprint throughout the energy sector,” explained Ernst
Sack, Partner at Blue Bear Capital, a Houston- and Los Angeles-based
investment firm focused on digital technologies within the global energy
supply chain. “Moreover, the ability to extend Everactive’s technology
to new products and markets was key to our investment thesis.”
According to Everactive investor and NEA Venture Partner, Greg
Papadoupolous, “Everactive’s underlying technology is magical. They have
innovated across the stack—from ultra-low-power chips and scalable
networks, to adaptive edge-to-cloud analytics that optimize energy
usage—to make batteryless sensors a reality.”
Everactive can eliminate batteries due to its underlying integrated
circuit and wireless networking expertise. The company’s co-founders,
Drs. Benton Calhoun and David Wentzloff, have been working on
ultra-low-power electronics since their days together at MIT’s
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science program. In subsequent years,
as professors at the University of Virginia and University of Michigan,
respectively, the two continued to collaborate until several key proof
points prompted them to spin the company out of the two research
institutions. Those proof points demonstrated the ability to
continuously operate fully integrated circuits at up to 1/1,000th
the power budget of commercially available chips, allowing them to power
their devices exclusively from low levels of harvested energy—such as
indoor light, small temperature differentials, and vibration.
On top of that core chip technology, Everactive has not only built its
own self-powered sensor devices, but also all the networking, software,
and cloud analytics to be able to deliver insights to customers.
According to Nunn, “new data streams are important only insofar as
customers receive value; we’re trying to make that as easy as possible
by not just generating new data streams, but also providing the answer
to the ‘so what?’ question about that raw data.”
About Everactive
Everactive produces data intelligence for the physical world. Operating
without batteries, the company’s always-on wireless sensor networks
deliver continuous cloud-based analytics at a scale not possible with
battery-powered devices. Everactive’s end-to-end solutions are built
upon groundbreaking advances in ultra-low-power circuit design and
wireless communication that allow the company to power its Eversensors
exclusively from harvested energy. The company has also developed the
required networking and cloud software to deliver an out-of-the-box
service focused on providing customers with valuable insights from its
newly generated and self-sustaining data streams. Everactive has offices
in Santa Clara, CA; Charlottesville, VA; and Ann Arbor, MI. For
additional information, visit www.everactive.com.
About Future Fund
The Future Fund is Australia’s sovereign wealth fund. The Fund invests
for the benefit of future generations of Australians. Future Fund was
established in 2006 to strengthen the Australian Government’s long-term
financial position. Every dollar that it makes is a dollar that adds to
Australia’s wealth and contributes to its future. The Fund invests the
assets of special purpose public asset funds: the Future Fund,
DisabilityCare Australia Fund, Medical Research Future Fund, Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Land and Sea Future Fund and two
Nation-building Funds. Its role is to generate high, risk-adjusted
returns over the long-term. Future Fund operates independently from
Government and tailors the management of each fund to its unique
investment mandate. The Fund is an intergenerational sovereign wealth
fund, not a superannuation fund designed to allow the Australian
Government to save today to meet the costs of tomorrow.
About ABB
ABB (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) is a pioneering technology leader with a
comprehensive offering for digital industries. With a history of
innovation spanning more than 130 years, ABB is today a leader in
digital industries with four customer-focused, globally leading
businesses: Electrification, Industrial Automation, Motion, and Robotics
& Discrete Automation, supported by its common ABB Ability™ digital
platform. ABB’s market leading Power Grids business will be divested to
Hitachi in 2020. ABB operates in more than 100 countries with about
147,000 employees. For additional information, visit www.abb.com.
About NEA
New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm
focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses
across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With more than $20
billion in cumulative committed capital since the firm’s founding in
1977, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages
in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm’s long
track record of successful investing includes more than 220 portfolio
company IPOs and more than 370 acquisitions. For additional information,
visit www.nea.com.
About Blue Bear Capital
Blue Bear is a venture capital and growth equity firm driving digital
technologies into multi-billion-dollar verticals across the energy
industry. The team comes together from leading energy private equity
firms and features technology expertise from the tech startup world
alongside operational leadership from the NASA astronaut corps. Blue
Bear’s portfolio covers AI, IoT, and cyber security technologies, all
deployed with leading enterprise customers as they improve the economics
of wind, solar, and storage while driving efficiencies across the energy
industry. For additional information, visit www.bluebearcap.com
About OUP
OUP invests in startups developing pioneering technologies in
partnership with the top research institutions in the US and abroad.
Since 2009, OUP has been the most active venture capital investor in
university startups. Through a deep relationship with almost 100
universities, OUP has backed over 90 of the best and most exciting
companies based on university research. OUP works with entrepreneurs,
scientists, and students who are integral to the university startup
ecosystem’s success. Through its efforts, OUP seeks to bring the
discoveries of the world’s preeminent researchers to market. OUP has
approximately $600M under management and is currently investing out of a
$273M fund launched in 2019. For additional information, visit https://oup.vc/.
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