IU Ventures invests in wireless power technology
BLOOOMINGTON (Inside INdiana Business) — A Chicago-based company that focuses on wireless power for a variety of uses, such as implanted medical devices, has received a $1 million investment from IU Ventures, a nonprofit organization that supports and invests in IU-affiliated innovation.
The company, NuCurrent Inc, is run by Indiana University alumnus Jacob Babcock. IU Ventures says the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund participated in the Series C round of funding to accelerate NuCurrent’s growth in the emerging wireless power industry.
“Our evaluation of the emerging wireless power marketplace clearly demonstrated that the NuCurrent team was becoming a global leader in the design and engineering of creative power solutions that other teams were unable to accomplish,” said Jason Whitney, associate vice president of IU Ventures.
Babcock was an undergrad at IU and earned his law degree from Northwestern University. That’s where Babcock took part in a business plan competition. He and his colleagues developed intellectual property for charging implantable medical devices. The concept led to the launch of NuCurrent six years ago.
“The question of how to safely, wirelessly charge an implanted device like a pacemaker inside a patient’s body drove the development of NuCurrent’s core IP. Today, we’re enabling wireless technology in everything from smartphones to wearable devices and beyond,” said Mike Harmon, marketing director at NuCurrent.
Whitney says Babcock represents the type of innovative alumnus that the IU fund wants to support.