A 6-year-old Bay Area startup developing self-cleaning glass technology has filed for liquidation.
Based in Dublin, InnovaSonic voluntarily filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protections on Tuesday, court documents show. The company — founded in 2016 by CEO Boris Kobrin, Joseph Geddes and Julian Zegelman, according to PitchBook — listed its total liabilities at $833,750 spread across 26 creditors and its total assets at less than $50,000.
Moscow-baed Orbita Capital Partners invested $375,000 in InnovaSonic, according to the bankruptcy filing, and its other investors included Toyota executive James J. Kuffner and Venture Development Partners. It also received $500,000 in grants and loans including $124,500 across two loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
InnovaSonic raised $1.2 million in funding as of October 2020, according to a YouTube video posted by the CEO's account.
Other investors in the U.S. and Cyprus were listed as claimants in the filing, along with the Small Business Administration.
InnovaSonic's lawyer didn't respond to a request for more information.
The company's website seemed to be non-operational as of Thursday, and it isn't clear if the company intends to shut down both its U.S. and European operations. It had a subsidiary in France that is going through insolvency proceedings, as well, according to the filing.
InnovaSonic was developing technology that would make glass surfaces self-cleaning through a process called piezoelectricity, through which electricity is produced via a mechanical force. Specifically, "piezoelectricity is the ability of a material to generate an internal electric field when subjected to mechanical stress or strain," according to the journal ScienceDirect.
InnovaSonic called its product PiezoWipe, which it described as a "self-cleaning technology for LIDAR enclosures, camera lenses, headlights, windshields and windows" that can keep "sensors and lighting, windshields and windows clean and free from fog and ice automatically," according to its profile at AngelList.
In 2018, it announced a partnership with Boston-based supersonic jet developer Spike Aerospace to "explore potential applications" like de-icing and wiperless windshields, as well as cleaning aircraft touch screens.
