Wazoku Raises £2.3M in Funding

Wazoku, a London, UK-based idea software management company, raised £2.3m in funding.

The company received new venture debt finance from Barclays of £680k as well as equity financing from existing investors Cambridge Angels and Fig.

Wazoku, which has raised £3.6m to date, will use the funds for product development and corporate expansion efforts.

Led by Simon Hill, founder and CEO, the company provides a cloud-based idea management software platform, Idea Spotlight, which allows organisations encourage internal and external crowdsourcing initiatives that allow organizations to draw on ideas from employees, suppliers and other partners to enhance their businesses.
Customers include Aviva, Waitrose, John Lewis Partnership, Virgin Trains East Coast and Avis Budget Group.

FinSMEs

10/03/2017

AMS acquires CCMOSS to become world leader in gas and infrared sensing.

Premstaetten, Austria (16 June 2016) - ams (SIX: AMS), a leading worldwide manufacturer of high performance sensor and analog solutions, has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares in Cambridge CMOS Sensors Ltd (CCMOSS), the technology leader in micro hotplate structures for gas sensing and infrared applications, in an all-cash transaction.

CCMOSS’ micro hotplates are MEMS structures that are used in gas sensors for volume applications in the automotive, industrial, medical, and consumer markets. The company’s deep expertise in this area is highly synergetic with ams’ technology leadership in MOX gas sensing materials to detect gases like CO, NOx, and VOCs. CCMOSS’ manufactures these MEMS structures on CMOS wafers allowing the creation of complete monolithically integrated CMOS sensor ICs. This makes CCMOSS’ solutions highly cost-efficient, besides offering other significant advantages over competing technologies like low power consumption, small footprint and the ability to integrate additional sensor modalities like relative humidity, temperature, and pressure.

In addition, CCMOSS commands an industry-leading portfolio of IR technology comprising high performance IR radiation sources and detectors for sensor applications. Highly complementary to ams’ spectral sensing strategy for next generation optical sensor technologies, CCMOSS’ IR sensing is based on the same monolithic CMOS structures as for gas sensing, enabling miniaturized implementations and efficient integration with other on-chip functions. Applications include CO2 gas sensing and human presence detection and will extend into spectroscopic identification of organic materials.

Founded in 2008 as a spin-off from Cambridge University, with the start of technology development dating back to 1994 in collaboration with the University of Warwick, CCMOSS has built an outstanding expertise in micro hotplate design and manufacturing for gas and infrared sensing over more than 20 years. CCMOSS’ corporate headquarters are located in Cambridge, UK, and the company has 33 employees. The Cambridge region has become a center of innovation for sensor technologies globally so ams values the ability to gain direct access to this attractive ecosystem going forward. CCMOSS currently has product revenues on a small scale but is not yet profitable.

The parties to the transaction, which is expected to close within a week given that no regulatory approvals are needed, have agreed to keep the consideration confidential. ams plans to fully integrate CCMOSS’ activities into its existing environmental sensor business, which has development locations in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and Reutlingen, Germany.

Alexander Everke, CEO of ams, commented on the transaction, “The addition of CCMOSS makes ams the clear leader in gas and infrared sensor technology worldwide, and completes ams’ portfolio of products and technologies for the environmental sensor market. This highly strategic acquisition is therefore another key step in making ams the world’s leading provider of sensor solutions for consumer, automotive, industrial, and medical applications.”

Cambridge Innovation Capital and IQ Capital co-lead £1M funding of Audio Analytic Ltd

LISTENING LIGHTBULB USES AUDIO ANALYTIC’S SMART HOME TECH

Cambridge Innovation Capital and IQ Capital co-lead £1M funding of sound recognition company

A smart lightbulb that can recognise the sound of an intruder breaking a window has won a major industry award. This has fuelled further demand for Audio Analytic, the world’s leading sound recognition company. To address its growing order book and fund new developments, the company has raised £1 million from investors including IQ Capital Partners, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Cambridge Angels.

In January ‘Sengled Voice’ won the 2016 CES Best of Innovation in the Smart Home category*. It is a light bulb with an integrated microphone and speaker that allows the detection of noises, such as glass breaking or a smoke alarm, to be analysed using Audio Analytic’s ai3 (acoustic intelligence 3) technology and communicated to the homeowner via a mobile alert.

The Smart Home market is growing rapidly and Audio Analytic is working with the leading brands to incorporate its unique sound recognition and identification software into products – such as sophisticated baby alarms, net cams, smart home hubs, intelligent lighting – that can identify sounds associated specifically with safety and security and alert the home owner.

Dr Chris Mitchell, founder and CEO of Audio Analytic, says that the company has pioneered this technology: “I have always been interested in how sound can be detected and identified so when I finished my PhD and found there were no companies addressing this market I set up Audio Analytic.”

The Cambridge-based company is now 17 strong and the new funding will be used to bring on new people to manage the sales pipeline and to invest in further R&D.

Mitchell continues: “The Audio Analytic Labs really are the technological brain to Audio Analytic; where fundamental research is undertaken. We are leading the way at the technology level and this further investment will help keep us there.”

As leaders in the field of Automatic Environmental Sound Recognition, Audio Analytic software is much in demand and the £1 million investment will support this.

Mitchell comments: “We have a strong client-base in the smart home space. This includes Sengled, a global innovator in LED lighting, integrating our software into their product helped them win the prestigious innovation award at CES.”

The company so far has catalogued seven sound types, including breaking glass (comprising four different types), baby cries and smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and has the world’s most extensive reference-base of these noises, allowing high precision recognition.

Mitchell explains that there are considerable differences between the different brands of alarms, so creating the database has involved importing hundreds of alarms, mostly from the US.

He says: “A major challenge was creating the world’s first sound libraries designed for sound recognition. This resulted in us breaking panes of glass at the “Hush House” at Alconbury, which was previously used for testing jet engines, or setting off smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in lots of houses.”

A report by Markets and Markets in February 2015** estimates the smart home market will reach $58.68 billion by 2020.

Victor Christou, Chief Executive Officer at Cambridge Innovation Capital, comments: “Recognition of the importance of smart audio in the home automation market has grown massively recently.  With the world’s largest audio database and key customer relationships already established, Audio Analytic is the category leader in this sector.  CIC is very pleased to be supporting another world class, home-grown, Cambridge business.”

Max Bautin, Managing Partner at IQ Capital, added: “We have tracked impressive progress at Audio Analytic over several years and are delighted to be part of this exciting company at a time when IoT and smart home tech is starting to grow so rapidly.

“It is also great to see Cambridge investors working together yet again to fund an exceptional Cambridge start-up with global potential.”