File photo by Jack Kustron | photoj.com
Traycer CEO Brad Beasecker says the company is "very much attacking commercial markets."
- Carrie Ghose
- Staff reporter-Business First
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Traycer Diagnostic Systems Inc. has closed a $5 million investment round led by a Silicon Valley venture capital firm to complete the commercial launch of its imaging system using non-harmful terahertz frequencies.
Phoenix Venture Partners, of San Mateo, Calif., is a fund that specializes in technologies using advanced materials and optics, which made it a perfect match and helped hook up Columbus-based Traycer with a more efficient supplier network, Traycer CEO Brad Beasecker said.
Traycer’s technology was developed by physicist Lee Mosbacker while completing his doctoral degree at Ohio State University. The company’s website bills it as “the first real-time, broadband, cost-effective terahertz (THz) camera.”
The company has a simple tutorial on what all this means, but basically terahertz waves, just below infrared in frequency, can penetrate materials like ceramic coatings to make images to check for flaws without damaging the product like X-rays. Mosbacker then got the technology into a device that handles like a camera and produces images in real time.
“Traycer’s technology offers the first real opportunity to bring terahertz to a broad set of applications ranging from quality control to defense,” said a statement from Phoenix Venture co-founder Frank Levinson.
“Traycer’s unique approach improves sensitivity, measurement speed, and provides image resolutions that were impossible in the past thereby opening up multi-billion dollar markets for this wavelength band,” he said.
Phoenix General Partner Zach Jonasson said Traycer’s system opens “multiple significant industrial applications for terahertz that were not possible before.”
The product has been sold to laboratory markets – the company isn’t releasing revenue yet – but this financing will help make it more robust to withstand the environment of a factory production line and perform consistently with repetitious use.
“We are very much attacking commercial markets,” Beasecker said.
A common complaint about Central Ohio’s funding landscape is that once companies get to this level of investment they can’t find local VCs and the ones on the coasts tend to pluck them away. Both Levinson and Jonasson join Traycer’s board, but the company won’t move to Silicon Valley.
“They appreciate Midwestern values,” Beasecker said.
Beasecker credited TechColumbus and financing from the Ohio TechAngel Funds for helping get the company to this point. Last week Traycer “graduated” from the TechColumbus incubator to offices on Long Street downtown. It’s hiring its sixth employee, and he said the pace of future growth depends on sales.
Carrie Ghose covers health care and medicine, higher education, technology and business services for Business First.
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