Vicis is raising more money to help develop its high-tech football helmet.
The Seattle-based startup, which spun out of the University of Washington last year, has raised $1.6 million of a $3 million round, Vicis CEO Dave Marver confirmed today. The money will be used to continue developing Vicis’ innovative helmet designed to mitigate the forces that are thought to cause concussions on the football field and in other contact sports.
“We are working with great determination to bring this helmet to market in 2016,” Marver said.
Marver noted that the fresh funding comes from a combination of investors that includes prominent local spine and neurosurgeons, current NFL players and coaches, head health advocates, and members of the Seattle business community.
Vicis works out of the UW’s CoMotion incubator and previously raised grant funding from the university — which has an equity stake in the company — and the Coulter Foundation. The company, which employs ten full-time engineers and more than 20 additional full and part-time employees, brought in $500,000 this past November from the Head Health Challenge program run by the NFL, Under Armour, and GE. It also has investments from Seattle-based W-Fund and the Alliance of Angels. Total investments and grant commitments exceed $3.5 million.
The founding team behind Vicis is impressive. Marver has over two decades of business experience in the medical device space; Chief Medical Officer Samuel Browd is a director for the Seattle Children’s Hospital Sports Concussion Program; Chief Technology Officer Per Reinhall is the chairman of the UW Mechanical Engineering Department; and Chief Science Officer Jonathan Posner is an associate professor at the UW Mechanical Engineering Department and an expert in fluid dynamics.
Learn more about Vicis here.
