Redwood City, Calif.-based EoPlex Technologies, an advanced materials firm that builds small devices to generate and manage energy for various manufacturing components, has tacked on another $4 million to its third funding round — bringing the total to $12 million. ATA Ventures once again led the extra financing and was backed by fellow VCs Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Labrador Ventures and Draper Richards.
The additional funds will be used to pay for the construction of a new production plant that will manufacture high-tech cell phone antennas. The dielectric properties of the ceramic material in EoPlex’s advanced ceramic-metal antennas provide superior performance for functions like linking to Bluetooth and GPS, CEO Arthur Chait says; the cell phone industry has been steadily shifting away from metal antennas in favor of these new hybrid ones.
Chait stresses that his company is best positioned to produce these antennas at low cost and high volume. EoPlex uses proprietary “inks” and a custom print-forming process to print ceramic, metallic and polymer materials on any of a number of miniature manufacturing components. Construction of the facility, which will be located next to its Redwood City headquarters, has already started and is expected to wrap up within the next few months. Production is expected to begin by the end of the fourth quarter this year.
