A Westwood company manufacturing nano-structured carbon materials that will support the next generation of electronic devices received a $2.4 million loan in a five-year commitment from MassDevelopment's Emerging Technology Fund.
Nano-C, an eleven-year-old MIT spinoff named after 'nanostructured carbon,' is being backed largely by private individuals. One of them is Ray Stata, the co-founder and chairman of Norwood-based chipmaker Analog Devices, who invested $3 million in 2018. The company raised funding form a single venture fund, mobility-focused Fontinalis Partners, in 2013.
"We're looking to expand our physical assets," CEO Viktor Vejins explained. "This is all about expanding our building, adding equipment, and that is generally better done by a debt-based financing rather than an equity-based financing."
Over the next year, the company will invest the money to add machinery to its Westwood facility. The new equipment will make materials and chemicals for solar and semiconductor production, Vejins added, as the company gets ready to enter commercial production later this year. The nano-materials the company has been working on for over a decade have applications in displays and touchscreens, renewable energy and sensors.
"These are the kind of new materials that will change how we work, how we live, how we play," Vejins said.
As the company expands its business, it will also add around 50 people to its current staff of 30. In addition to production experts, the company will be looking for mid-level people in management and logistics.
"We currently operate our facility on a two-shift per day, five days a week," Vejins said. "We will continue to do that and add conditional people on the back shift."
Vejins won't disclose the total funding to date, but told the Boston Business Journal last year that the firm had raised about $40 million total since its founding in 2001.
Last year, MassDevelopment’s Emerging Technology Fund granted a $1.8 million low-interest loan to Vyasa Analytics, a deep learning software provider for life science and healthcare organizations.
