Lelantos is developing gas sensors for IoT monitoring applications targeted to the oil, gas, and HVACR industries, and has announced this week that it has raised the initial seed funds required for the verification and commercialization of its novel technology. In August, Lelantos was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) SBIR Phase II grant. Concurrently, Lelantos also engaged with Silicon Catalyst Angels, a group of early-stage angel investors based in Silicon Valley. After numerous presentations and a due diligence process, Silicon Catalyst Angels made an initial equity investment in the company that was completed in September 2021. The combination of the SBIR grant and the equity investment enables Lelantos to expand the team and move forward on schedule with their product development timeline.
“Securing this initial funding is a very important step forward for the company,” said Dr. Stylianos Siontas, CEO and co-founder of Lelantos. “Our vision is to provide pervasive environmental monitoring and safe working conditions in the oil/gas and HVACR market. We appreciate the shared commitment from these early investment groups to enable this vision.”
Lelantos was founded in 2019 by Columbia University professors, Dr. Ioannis Kymissis and Dr. Jose Bajamonde, CTO, alongside Dr. Stylianos Siontas. The foundational technology was developed in Dr. Kymissis's lab over the last 5 years. Lelantos implements a novel approach to sense the presence and identity of the target gas molecules by leveraging functionalized piezoelectric films that can be fabricated on conventional silicon microchips. This approach enables a single sensing device able to identify a myriad of target gasses while offering an unparalleled combination of size, power, and cost, enabling widespread adoption in IoT applications. The opportunity to commercialize the technology was realized with the award of an NSF STTR Phase I grant in 2020.
“We are pleased to witness the strong investment support in Lelantos combined with the SBIR II grant. We have been extremely impressed by the team and their continued advancement of a technology that could have a material impact on addressing leak detection applications in the oil & gas industry. Aegex is strongly invested in this space and continually seeks innovative sensor technologies that we can support in integrating into our IoT solutions. With this milestone, we will be expanding our support and continue to commit resources to accelerate the Lelantos technical development and path to commercialization.’’ said Thomas Ventulett, CEO of Aegex Technologies, LLC a global provider of certified intrinsically safe solutions targeted to the industrial market.
In April 2021, Lelantos joined the Silicon Catalyst incubator to take advantage of the expanded design and manufacturing ecosystem. The mission of Silicon Catalyst is to lower the capital expenses associated with the design and fabrication of silicon-based IC’s, sensors, and MEMS devices. For over seven years, the Silicon Catalyst partner ecosystem has enabled early-stage companies to build complex silicon chips at a fraction of the typical cost. Additionally, the startups can tap into the world-class Silicon Catalyst advisor and investor network.
“The Silicon Catalyst Angels members went through a comprehensive diligence process prior to making this initial equity investment in Lelantos”, said Pete Rodriguez, CEO, Silicon Catalyst. “The gas sensor technology addresses a critical market that is already very large and will grow dramatically in the coming years. We enjoy working with teams that are aggressively pursuing markets with winning solutions.”
About Silicon Catalyst and Silicon Catalyst Angels
It’s About What’s Next® -- Silicon Catalyst is the world’s only incubator focused exclusively on accelerating solutions in silicon (including IP, MEMS and sensors), building a coalition of in-kind and strategic partners to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of development. More than 600 startup companies worldwide have engaged with Silicon Catalyst and have admitted 39 exciting companies. With a world-class network of mentors to advise startups, Silicon Catalyst is helping new semiconductor and sensor companies address the challenges in moving from idea to realization. The incubator/accelerator supplies startups with a path to design tools, silicon devices, networking, access to funding, banking and marketing acumen to successfully launch and grow their companies’ novel technology solutions. The Silicon Catalyst Angels was established in July 2019 as a separate organization to provide access to seed and Series A funding for Silicon Catalyst portfolio companies. More information is available at: www.siliconcatalyst.com and www.siliconcatalystangels.com
About Lelantos
Lelantos is revolutionizing the world of gas sensing, developing a new generation of IoT compatible gas sensors targeted to high value monitoring applications in threat detection, industrial safety, environmental and air quality monitoring as well as medical diagnostics. Current gas sensors suffer from inherent weaknesses such bulky size, high power consumption and high cost. As such, they prohibit effective monitoring in IoT oriented use cases that require pervasive sensing to be provided by autonomous, battery operated sensors with wireless connectivity. In contrast, Lelantos sensors can achieve up to 1000x more compact size, lower power consumption and lower cost than currently utilized systems. With its transformative sensing technology, Lelantos is enabling the widespread adoption of gas sensing in IoT applications and the disruption of the market providing a true chemical sensor for the Internet of Things. More information is available at: www.lelantostech.com
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