NuCurrent Wants to Wirelessly Power Phones, Drones and Machines of the Future
When it comes to the next generation of technology products, it makes very little sense for them to be equipped with charging ports. Autonomous crop-suveying drones become much more inefficient if you have to manually plug them into a wall at night. Smart clothes with built-in computer chips can’t be thrown in the wash if they have an open micro USB port. And Internet-of-Things connected industrial machines are less effective if you have to regularly run a wire through the back to keep them powered.
Many of tomorrow’s machines are going to require wireless charging, and Chicago startup NuCurrent wants to be the technology powering those products.
NuCurrent launched in 2009 and was founded by Northwestern grad Jacob Babcock. The company has grown into one of Chicago’s most promising startups with over 50 patents granted or pending, and with a team of only 15 people. NuCurrent has built its staff with industry experts from Blackberry, Intel and Motorola. In fact, five of NuCurrent’s last seven hires are former Motorola employees, including Bob Giometti, who the company just hired this month as VP of engineering, and Glenn Riese, NuCurrent’s director of product engineering. Both Giometti and Riese worked on the Motorola Razr, among other products at the cell phone maker.
NuCurrent, which has raised a $3.4 million Series A in 2014, has built wireless charging technology using high-efficiency antennas that can power products using lower heat. It works with companies like Molex Industries, a multi-billion-dollar manufacturer of electronic connectors, where NuCurrent will allow Molex to expands its wireless power capabilities. Molex is also a strategic investor in NuCurrent.
Another customer is Gill Electronics, a company that uses NuCurrent’s technology with a transmitter that’s placed underneath furniture to create wireless charging tables and desks. Gill Electronics licenses NuCurrent’s wireless charging tech and sells its equipment to sports arenas like San Francisco’s Levi Stadium and the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.
But NuCurrent’s plans are bigger than just wirelessly charging your phone from your desk, Babcock said.
“Mobile is the starting point (for wireless charging),” he said. “But in my honest opinion, mobile is not the most important application for wireless charing or wireless power.”
The company is working on wireless charging tech for a range of industries, like drones, wearables and the industrial Internet-of-Things, Babcock says. As autonomous drones survey farms, buzz through warehouses, and (eventually) deliver us packages, they’re going to need a place to land and charge–wirelessly. Industrial equipment that uses sensors to measure the weight of containers or the pressure in a tank will benefit from not being connected to an outlet. And the next generation of wearables that embed within our clothing will need to eliminate power cords all together in order to make it through a wash cycle.
Babcock says NuCurrent is working in all of these areas, but declined to name specific partners. He said people can expect to see products in these categories that have NuCurrent’s technology in them next year.
NuCurrent’s traction comes as another wireless charging startup uBeam came under fire this year for essentially being a fraud after a former employee called the company out for not being anywhere close to delivering its promised product. uBeam says it’s building technology that can charge products from several feet away, not just from under the table. While time will tell if uBeam can deliver on its promise, Babcock says NuCurrent’s tech is already proven and in production. The difference is NuCurrent focuses on inductive power transfer, while uBeam claims to use ultrasound to transmit power across larger distances (NuCurrent works within 25 millimeters).
Babcock says NuCurrent’s goal is to continuing adding customers and generating revenue, and integrate it’s wireless changing technology with the top product makers across industries.
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