Press Release
March 20, 2023

Zepsor Technologies joins the Silicon Catalyst Incubator

Funding closed with Silicon Catalyst Angels and DARPA Grant

Boston Massachusetts and Silicon Valley, California – March 20, 2023 – Zepsor Technologies, the leading developer of zero-power infrared sensors, is announcing that the company has been accepted into the Silicon Catalyst incubator, the world’s only incubator focused exclusively on accelerating semiconductor solutions. Zepsor has designed and demonstrated a unique sensing capability that detects the thermal energy generated from a person, and then activates itself and other electronics without requiring any idle power. This sensing technology can reduce the battery consumption of many common products and provide a ten-fold improvement in the time between battery charge or battery replacement for many applications.

In January 2023, the Zepsor team was awarded a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant for $1.8 million over a 3-year development project. In addition to this non-dilutive funding from DARPA, Zepsor also received an additional equity investment from Silicon Catalyst Angels and other seed-stage investors. The combination of these funds, and earlier ARPA-E and DHS grants amount to a total of $3M raised from grants and equity investments. “Securing this initial funding and engaging with Silicon Catalyst creates a strong platform for the Zepsor product development and commercialization,” said Dr. Matteo Rinaldi, CEO and co-founder of Zepsor Technologies. “We anticipate an exciting year as we start sampling our Zero-Power infrared sensors for proximity and presence detection.”

Zepsor Technologies was founded at the Northeastern University SMART Center and incorporated in 2021 to commercialize a family of sensors capable of activating themselves upon the presence of specific infrared-emitting targets without consuming any power in standby. The name “Zepsor” stands for Zero-Power Sensors®, the primary characteristic of their products. The founding team of Dr. Matteo Rinaldi, and Dr. Zhenyun Qian, have located the company in the Boston Massachusetts area to take advantage of the engineering and manufacturing resources associated with the region. Zepsor has identified applications for the technology in a variety of “Smart City” initiatives, building controls and touchless sensing for industrial and medical.

“The Zepsor infrared sensor devices make the world more energy efficient and reduce the waste of battery materials which are becoming a global concern,” said Paul Pickering, Managing Partner at Silicon Catalyst. “The deployment of this technology is urgent, and Silicon Catalyst is pleased to support the acceleration of the product development.”

About Zepsor Technologies

Zepsor Technologies develops zero-power infrared sensors based on micro and nano technology for proximity sensing, presence detection, and security applications. Zepsor's unique approach eliminates the need for standby power, allowing its sensors to be much smaller and more power efficient than existing technologies. This new kind of sensor offers a unique sleep-yet-alert standby mode meaning that it does not drain any battery power to continuously monitor the environment, instead it detects target events by harvesting and reacting to the infrared energy contained in the signal of interest. More information is available at: www.zepsor.com

About Silicon Catalyst

Silicon Catalyst is the world’s only incubator focused exclusively on accelerating semiconductor solutions, built on a comprehensive coalition of in-kind and strategic partners to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of development. More than 800 startup companies worldwide have engaged with Silicon Catalyst and the company has admitted 90 exciting companies. With a world-class network of mentors to advise startups, Silicon Catalyst is helping new semiconductor companies address the challenges in moving from idea to realization. The incubator/accelerator supplies startups with access to design tools, silicon devices, networking, and a path to funding, banking and marketing acumen to successfully launch and grow their companies’ novel technology solutions. Over the past seven plus years, the Silicon Catalyst model has proven to dramatically accelerate a startup’s trajectory while at the same time de-risking the equation for investors. Silicon Catalyst has been named the Semiconductor Review’s 2021 Top-10 Solutions Company award winner. More information is available at www.siliconcatalyst.com