Metamaterial Raises At Least $3.1M

The Growing Metamaterials Sector

When George Palikaras announced Metamaterial Technologies’ partnership with Airbus last summer, he predicted the metamaterials market, then worth about $800 million, would be a multi-billion-dollar market before long.

He recently saw a market report estimating that the market would grow to $1.9 billion by 2025, but he thinks that figure lowballs the industry’s potential.

“They may be underestimating it – that’s my view,” said the Metamaterial CEO in an interview. “I’ve been talking to startups that are just emerging now, the investment is coming in and people like Bill Gates have started investing in this space.”

Optical metamaterials are nano-composites – smart materials that offer unique engineered properties not found in nature. Much of the scientific discovery – and virtually all of the commercial development – in this field have happened in this century, so it is a young segment of the economy.

The industry is growing and Metamaterials Technologies, whose metaAIR product protects aircraft cockpits and flight crew from laser interference, is a pioneer in the area.

“They’ve got a technology that’s amazing and better than anything any competition has,” said Ross Finlay, the Co-Founder of the First Angel Network, whose members have invested in the company. “It’s quite exciting because I think this is the first commercial nanotechnology that I’ve seen. There are others around the region but they haven’t got this far with it yet.”

Last year, metaAIR won the 2014 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Leadership in Aerospace for its “unrivaled” solution to the problem of laser attacks on aircraft.

“As a unique participant with an unrivaled solution to improve safety with such simplicity, metaAIR could become a standard in the industry and it may become mandatory in the advent of stricter safety regulations,” said a report by Frost & Sullivan, a San Antonio, Texas-based business consultancy for innovative businesses.

Naturally, Palikaras sees huge potential as inventors get behind the commercialization of metamaterials. He explains that software now governs the world we live in, but even software will be transformed by the development of new hardware breakthroughs, such as silicon photonics or high capacity batteries.

Silicon photonics is an evolving technology, relying on new materials, in which data is transferred among computer chips by optical rays. These rays carry more data in less time than electrical conductors. Palikaras describes it as “fibre optics on steroids”. Though it’s not a segment that Metamaterial Technologies is involved in, Palikaras says it is an example of the changes in materials that will spark new industries. 

”There is more risk and therefore lower investment in high-tech manufacturing,” he said. “But if you can break through and create that next generation of material then that has the potential to create a new industry sector that will last for 30 to 40 years.”