This is what we talk about when we talk about Disrupt. uBeam, a small startup founded by Meredith Perry, a 22-year-old new graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, has taken on $750,000 in seed funding to build out its technology for wirelessly charging electronic devices.
uBeam’s investors include Founders Fund’s angel investing arm, Andreessen Horowitz, Crunchfund, and a number of individual angel investors including Google’s Marissa Mayer and Zappos co-founder Tony Hsieh, uBeam’s Meredith Perry told TechCrunch today in a phone interview. The news was first posted earlier today by PandoDaily’s Erin Griffith.
But beyond the funding amount and investors, uBeam’s Perry declined to offer too many more details about the company, which appears most certainly to be in heads-down-and-hack mode. The company’s investors also tell us that this round was not raised for publicity purposes.
Here is what Perry would say: uBeam has “several patents” filed regarding its technology for wirelessly charging gadgets such as laptops and smartphones without plugging them into wall outlets or other energy sources, and she is being aided by a team of other people (she would not disclose uBeam’s staff count.)
It’s a super small round for the hardware space, and uBeam clearly has a lot of work and development ahead of it. More than anything, the new funding is really a testament to uBeam’s hustle — a startup getting out there and showing a really sharp demo to some influential people. The excitement was certainly palpable backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC back in May when Perry came to show TechCrunch founder and current Crunchfund head Michael Arrington her technology in action.
At that time, Arrington wrote that with her demo he’d witnessed “the closest thing to magic I’ve seen in a long time.” uBeam almost certainly showed the same demo to its other big-name investors, and the big money was clearly soon to follow.
It’ll be very exciting to see how uBeam develops the product now that the company has some serious money in its pockets — and some very smart people on speed-dial.
September 05, 2012
