A trio of atomic physicists from the Australian National University have raised $12 million for their start-up, which builds miniaturised quantum sensors for mining, underground resources exploration and navigation.
Nomad Atomics was founded by Kyle Hardman, Paul Wigley and Christian Freier, who worked at ANU on a post-doctoral research project in precision measurement, a niche subfield of atomic physics that uses atoms to make precise measurements of the world.
Christian Freier, Kyle Hardman and Paul Wigley are the co-founders of quantum sensor start-up Nomad Atomics.
With no interest in pursuing a career in academia, the co-founders embarked on commercialising their research in 2020, raising $2 million in seed funding and a fresh $10 million pre-series A round led by Blackbird with participation from Right Click Capital.
ANU is also a shareholder in the company.
The co-founders have kept a low profile, spending the past three years figuring out how to make quantum sensor technology small enough to leave the lab and take measurements of the outside world.
“We’ve built these sensors before – and so have many people around the world – in lab settings where they take up a whole room,” said Mr Wigley, the start-ups’s chief operating officer.
“There’s a whole room of infrastructure, and they sit there and they measure just where they are. They’re great proof of concepts of the technology, but not inherently useful to everyday industries.
“Being able to shrink it down to a size where you can take it out into the world and make measurements becomes really important and really valuable.”
Measuring gravity
Nomad Atomic’s quantum gravimeter, which measures the acceleration of gravity, is a 20cm x 20cm x 30cm box that is small enough that a single person can move it around to conduct surveys.
The company generates revenues by providing services such as conducting feasibility studies and mapping with their devices, and has already landed its first customers in underground mining, resource exploration and water utilities.
The quantum gravimeters can be used by resources companies to explore for deeper and smaller mineral deposits, or for more efficient and safe production from underground mines.
The promise of the technology is to provide more precise measurements than classical sensors, which rely on mechanical systems that can be skewed by changes to temperatures or the age of the device.
Quantum sensors can eliminate this device instability by relating all measurements to fundamentally unchanging properties of atoms.
“Quantum sensing has been around for ages … the push has always been: when will we get to the point when we can actually make these [sensors] a usable size?” said Mr Hardman, the chief executive of Nomad Atomics.
Making progress
Niki Scevak, partner at Blackbird, which has backed the company in its early days, said the start-up had made considerable progress developing its technology and applying it to making underground mining safer.
“Founders Kyle, Christian and Paul are among the best atomic physicists in the world, and the progress they have made on building a working quantum sensor has been nothing short of stunning to witness,” he said.
Nomad Atomics plans to use the fresh capital to grow the company, by building more devices and expanding its sales team, while continuing to invest in research and development of two new prototype sensors.
The start-up will also relocate from Canberra to Melbourne and plans to hire more than 20 new roles and plans to expand into the markets such as CO2 sequestration and navigation.
Three local atomic physicists bank $12m for their start-up - The Australian Financial Review
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment