Chrysalix Leads $5 Million Seed Financing In HaiLa Technologies Inc. To Commercialize Low Power IoT Solution

HaiLa Technologies Inc., a Canada-based semiconductor start-up that has developed a low power communication technology for IoT, announced today that it has raised $5 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Chrysalix Venture Capital. Other investors include Ecofuel Fund, TandemLaunch, a prolific university from California, and several angel investors including HaiLa’s newly appointed CEO and President, Ole Christian Andersen. This financing will enable HaiLa to demonstrate manufacturability, secure first tier customers and partners, and set the stage to completely revolutionize the wireless sensor industry.

“After winning the International Nokia Open Innovation competition last November and a plethora of other awards over the past 2 years, the HaiLa team are front runners in the IoT space with a commercially viable solution for low power and battery-less solutions using backscatter communication,” says Richard MacKellar partner of Chrysalix Venture Capital.

“We are excited to have the support of investors that prioritize environmentally sustainable technology. Together, we look forward to enable scalability for low power Wi-Fi IoT solutions in a world with unprecedented needs for wireless data collection” says Charlotte Savage, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of HaiLa Technologies.

HaiLa’s technology enables the use of existing ambient signals in the air as the carrier to ride its data on. This leads to a drastic decrease in power consumption which would either result in a much-extended battery life of devices, or enable energy harvesting solutions, allowing battery-free IoT devices for certain applications. Furthermore, HaiLa uses a proprietary and patented backscattering technique which allows modulation of digital sensor data on top of ambient signals of different protocols while maintaining the integrity of the signal to the original specific protocol. This ensures compatibility of HaiLa-enabled sensor tags to various existing wireless protocols, resulting in a drastic reduction in deployment costs and risks.

“It’s a real privilege to be asked to lead a company that’s based on solid leading-edge patented technologies, a world-class team and high growth potential. As a serial entrepreneur having spent 30 years in the IC/EDA/IP & networking industries, I’m excited about the potential of HaiLa and how we can enable ultra-low power Wi-Fi IoT solutions” says Ole Christian Andersen. “We’ll provide early access to the first HaiLa Wi-Fi IP core based on our backscatter technology by the end of 2020. This will enable companies to develop the next generation of ultra-low power chip-sets for IP over Ethernet over Wi-Fi in the IoT space.”