Norway-based Thin Film Electronics said it has raised $24 million to create flexible electronics on plastic sheets. The money will help the company on its mission of embedding electronic smarts into the “internet of things.”
Invesco Asset Management’s funds have agreed to acquire 46.7 million shares in the publicly traded Oslo company for NOK3.00 per share for a total of NOK140 million, or $24 million. That will give Invesco an addition 10 percent ownership of Thin Film Electronics. Earlier this month, Invesco acquired 13 percent of Thin Film in a private placement.
“Since Invesco’s original investment, we have seen intense international interest in Thinfilm,” said Davor Sutija, CEO of Thinfilm. “The investment announced today will provide a tremendous opportunity to deliver our vision for the Internet of Everything, in which printed electronic objects become part of the network through near-field wireless communication.”
The company is selling its printed electronics under the Thinfilm Memory brand name, and it has created sensors, displays and other devices for use in a variety of goods.
Thin Film Electronics has created a full system for a disposable printed electronic tag — a modern sensor system that could replace product bar codes — for a fraction of the cost of other competing products.
To date, vendors have cobbled together electronic tags from a variety of components. But Thin Film Electronics has pulled the components into an integrated system that can be printed onto flat stickers or plastic films. And it can add rewritable memory and sensors to the system. Within a matter of a few years, these smart tags could be used to get rid of the aging laser-scanned bar code and enable what tech visionaries like to call the “internet of things,” where everyday objects can access the internet and produce a huge volume of sensor data.