By Allan Maurer
UPDATED DURHAM, NC—Nextreme, a company making miniature cooling devices for eletronics, has raised a $13 million B round led by New York-based Chart Venture Partners with Virginia’s Redshift Venture Partners, New York’s Harris & Harris Group, Virginia’s In-Q-Tel, and Japan’s Itochu Corp.
The company, which RTI International spunout in 2004, develops cooling products that help keep tiny electronics from overheating, an increasing problem in the industry. It has raised a total of $27 million.
It focuses on military, semiconductor and telecom markets currently, but plans to enter consumer markets later.
The military and telecom would use the devices to cool laser diodes, sensors and other equipment.
Jesko von Windheim, CEO, tells TechJournal South the ultimate aim is to sell the devices for cooling the microprocessors used in laptops, PCs, and mobile devices. “We’ve already demonstrated that we can cool hot spots in microprocessors,” he says, “and there is a significant performance advantage when you do that.”
He notes that investor In-Q-Tel, which has connections to the U.S. Intelligence community, has been a strong supporter of early stage technology companies.
He adds that Japanese firm Itochu Corp. “is a very solid partner for us in the Asian markets, which is showing a lot of interest in our products.”
It is currently testing its first two products, both relying on the company’s “thermal bump” technology. “We have about 100 customers testing them,” says von Windheim.
“There are very few breakthrough innovations in the market today addressing these industry-wide thermal issues,” said Ted Hobart, partner with Chart Venture Partners.
It’s a pressing need. Microsoft faced a billion-dollar recall of its Xbox due to thermal issues. A major producer of graphics processors saw some of its graphics chips for notebook computers fail due to “extreme thermal environments.” It is taking a one-time $150 to $200 million charge in the second quarter to resolve the problem with its customers.
Nextreme’s thin-film thermoelectric products are manufactured in volume with the Thermal Copper Pillar Bump (www.nextreme.com/bump) process, an established electronic packaging approach that scales well into large arrays.
Nextreme’s core product, the thermal bumps, are only 100 microns high and 200 microns wide. A human hair is about 100 microns wide.
Thirty-eight employee Nextreme says it expects to go into larger production of its products in 2009.
Nextreme began shipping its first product in October of 2007.
“We’re fully staffed until we expand next year,” von Windheim says.
The company moved into its current production facility earlier this year. It has the capacity to make 3 million thermal bumps. When the company expands production, it will likely source it overseas, says von Windheim.
On the Web: www.nextreme.com
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