MetaVC Partners, a US-based venture capital firm, has made a first close of its planned $100m debut fund, with commitments from Bill Gates, a co-founder of software provider Microsoft, and Nathan Myhrvold, formerly chief technology officer at Microsoft who runs intellectual-property firm Intellectual Ventures.
MetaVC has licensed about 200 patents on metamaterials from Intellectual Ventures for its companies to use, managing partner Conrad Burke told news provider Wall Street Journal.
Burke and co-managing partner Chris Alliegro were previously executives at Invention Science Fund, a startup incubator at Intellectual Ventures that spun out several startups commercializing advances in metamaterials including Kymeta and threat-detection company Evolv Technologies, which is going public through a special-purpose acquisition company.
MetaVC has already backed optical computing company Neurophos and satellite-enabled telecommunication services provider Mangata Networks.
Duke University Professor David Smith, whose research laid the foundation for much of the current metamaterials technology, is serving as MetaVC’s chief scientist and incubation partner, the WSJ added.
Metamaterials are engineered materials arranged in repeating structures at a nano and microscale in a way that gives them acoustic, electromagnetic, mechanical and other properties not found in nature.
Photo of Chris Alliegro from Linkedin
