News Article
GaN developer mLED to expand with £348,000 funding
Apart from increasing its personnel, the company intends to use the equity funding to enhance its intellectual property and market its proprietary gallium nitride LED technology to initial customers
Braveheart Investment Group has made a further investment in mLED Limited, the micro LED company.
Based in Glasgow, mLED is an innovator in microLED technology, with product applications identified in a number of key growth markets. A spin-off from the Institute of Photonics of the University of Strathclyde, the company was launched in June 2010 with £150,000 seed funding.
In the latest funding round, led by Braveheart, mLED has secured an additional £378,000 from Braveheart's network of private clients, the Scottish Enterprise Co-Investment Fund and members of both mLED's board and technical advisory council.
The additional equity funding will enable the company to increase its personnel, enhance its intellectual property and market its proprietary technology to initial customers.
Geoffrey Thomson, Chief Executive of Braveheart Investment Group plc, says, "We are pleased to support this company which has pioneering technology and an impressive management team."
mLED says its new generation of ultra-high brightness micro-emitter arrays (microLEDs) is opening up major new segments within the nascent embedded pico projector market. Pico projectors can be found in a broad array of portable devices from bar code scanners to smartphones.
mLED claims its breakthrough harnesses pioneering developments in the area of programmable micro-pixellated LED technology, bringing an order of magnitude improvement in light intensity over current micro-display approaches.
The firm is developing a roadmap of products aimed at a range of high volume embedded applications and is already commercially engaged with some of the world's leading system integrators.
The proprietary microLED technology was developed over a 10 year period at the Institute of Photonics at the University of Strathclyde, where over £7million was invested in research leading to the core patent. Since inception, the university spin-off, mLED, has filed further related patents and has built significant application expertise.
