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RadianX has raised $5M in a seed round led by SOSV and Twynam. The funding will go toward a commercial-volume production line for its solar technology.
Other investors in the round include One Small Planet, Sachsen Ventures, Avila VC, California Innovation Fund, quantumEDGE, Riceberg Ventures, and Alumni Ventures. Separately, Pacific Union Technology Precision Manufacturing is contributing $4M of non-dilutive investment to build a dedicated production line for the startup.
RadianX was founded by Vivian Qu, co-founder and CEO, and Josh Douglas, co-founder and COO. The company has developed a solar material from the perovskite family. According to RadianX, the material matches existing solar panels outdoors and harvests light about twice as well indoors. Douglas said the company can harvest “any kind of photon,” indoor or outdoor, to keep a device running longer or indefinitely.
That indoor performance underpins what RadianX calls “edge energy.” Examples include an e-reader that never needs charging or an IoT sensor that never needs a battery swap. The company also sees potential in long-runtime robots and wearables that battery limits have held back.
Solar-powered devices are not a new idea, since solar calculators have existed for decades. Modern devices, though, draw too much power for traditional solar panels. Qu said the interest in perovskites comes down to power density.
Perovskites have struggled to gain a foothold. They remain more expensive than silicon panels and are less durable, though they have improved in recent years. RadianX argues that its indoor focus softens the durability problem, because indoor panels face less wear. The company says it has met a key industry durability standard. Its panels can be as thin as 0.7 millimeters and can be sized to fit a given device.
On performance, RadianX says a 1.2 meter by 0.6 meter panel harvests light at 22.33% efficiency, which the company describes as the best on record. The company is also developing power electronics tailored to perovskites, since most existing electronics are tuned for silicon, which has a very different light-soaking characteristic, according to Qu.
Unlike many solar companies, RadianX does not plan to sell bare panels. Qu said the company wants to package the whole system and sell it to device makers “as something they don’t need to worry about.” The founders hope the packages end up in everything from e-readers to factory sensors, and in some uses they haven’t yet imagined.
