Ossia, a Redmond-based startup developing wireless charging technology, is raising $24 million.
The six-year-old company confirmed today that it has already reeled in $9.3 million of the new round. The money will be used to build out Ossia’s Cota technology, which can wirelessly charge electronic devices through walls and power gadgets that are more than 40 feet away.
The fresh cash will also help Ossia protect its IP, move forward with business partnerships, and eventually get Cota into the hands of consumers.
We visited Ossia’s office back in April and met with CEO and founder Hatem Zeine, a trained physicist and former Microsoft engineer.
“I want my 3-year-old to grow up and never know about charging devices,” Zeine told us.
Cota consists of two entities: A small, embeddable charger that is installed in devices, and a stationary charging station.
The tiny charger can be installed inside devices and sends out a low-power beacon signal to the transmitter, a charging station that mimics a large PC tower and contains thousands of smart antennas. The transmitter then can return focused streams of targeted signals to power multiple devices — from smartphones to cameras to wearables — simultaneously at a radius of 40 feet and through obstructions like walls or human bodies. The visual above shows how this works.
Even when a device moves around the room, Cota is able to instantly redirect those signals and send power from the charging station. It’s a solution that uses the law of physics and a little bit of imagination to work successfully.
Cota’s transmitter can send about 1 watt of power, or one-third of what today’s phone chargers provide. The energy is sent over the same bands used by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so Cota can take advantage of existing antennas already embedded inside our devices, with some slight modifications.
Cota’s tracking beacons only use about 1/10,000th of the signal power of Wi-Fi, making the technology safe to use based on regulations set for the energy that mobile phones already emit today.
In April, Zeine said that Ossia had raised a little more than $6 million. This new round would push total funding past $30 million. The company just last week raised more money from Intel Capital, the venture arm of Intel.
