A SCOTS company which is revolutionising the delivery of mobile internet using light has announced the competition of an $18 million (£14m) funding round to help take its technology to mass-market mobile device and lighting manufacturers.
The funding round announced today for Edinburgh-based pureLiFi, includes the Scottish Investment Bank and Temasek, an investment company located in Singapore.
Its switch from LiFi systems – announced in February – will allow the company to further develop its Gigabit LiFi components and bring them to market ready for integration with mobile devices such as laptops.
Since their announcement and a demonstration of the technology at the Mobile World Congress, pureLiFi has been working with device manufacturers and communications firms to have LiFi designed into commercial laptops, tablets and mobile devices.
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“LiFi is the natural next step in the evolution of global wireless communications and pureLiFi is leading the way to provide this technology to the market,” said pureLiFi CEO Alistair Banham.
“Our investors believe in our team and our strategy to provide LiFi for every light and every device, and we have the products to support mobile device integration of LiFi.”
LiFi enables the transfer of the internet through light without the use of radio frequencies used by other technologies.
Professor Harald Hass, the company’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, said: “After more than a decade of persistent and systematic development of key technologies for wireless communications using light and the demonstration of the almost unlimited capabilities of LiFi for secure gigabit wireless connectivity for many use cases such as machine-to-machine communication, we are now at the precipice of a watershed moment for LiFi.
“I am absolutely delighted that we are now empowered to get the LiFi mass-market avalanche in motion.”
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