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Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology - by Efrain Viscarolasaga Mass High Tech
Lilliputian Systems Inc., a notoriously secretive company developing matchbook-sized fuel cells, has landed $18 million in new funding, according to newly filed public documents.
The new funding round brings Lilliputian's total funding to more than $60 million since its inception in 2001, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Previous investors in the micro fuel cell developer -- Atlas Venture of Waltham, Rockport Capital Partners of Boston, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCD) of California -- were all part of the funding. A new investor, DAG Ventures of Palo Alto, Calif., also participated.
Executives from the Wilmington-based company declined to comment on the funding.
Lilliputian has been rumored since 2001 to be developing a new kind of battery for electronic handheld devices and other applications. According to published reports, the company's product is a combination of fuel cell and micro-electromechanical (MEMS) technologies that create a "fuel cell chip" that runs on small amounts of butane.
The use of butane, said Sara Bradford, director of Frost & Sullivan's North American Energy and Power Systems Practice, is a positive as Lilliputian looks toward commercialization. Butane, she said, is readily available and cheaper than most other fuel sources, such as methane.
However, Lilliputian is not the only company developing fuel cells that use butane. Michigan-based Adaptive Materials Inc., which was co-founded by an MIT Ph.D., has developed a portable fuel cell system running on butane or propane. The system, however, is about the size of a pint glass -- considerably larger than Lilliputian's proposed unit.
Lilliputian's technology is aimed at handheld consumer devices, such as cell phones and PDAs. That could represent 235 million units by 2013 (about $450 million in revenue), compared with about 200,000 units in 2007, according to Frost & Sullivan research.
In a broader scope, Lilluputian is part of a hot and growing local ecosystem of companies working on battery technologies and garnering interest from investors. Watertown's A123Systems Inc., which is working on lithium-ion battery technologies for portable devices and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, landed $30 million in new funding in October. Westborough's Boston Power Inc., which is also working on lithuim-ion technologies but aimed at the laptop market, brought in almost $16 million last February.
Lilliputian is also looking at other industries. The company has been working on portable power applications with the Natick Soldier Center, according to Alan Macdonald, executive director of the Massachusetts Defense Technology Initiative.
As part of the investment, John Cadeddu of DAG Ventures will join Jeffrey Andrews of Atlas Venture, David Prend of Rockport Capital and Russell Siegelman of KPCB as investor representatives on the company's board of directors.
Cadeddu, who got his undergraduate degree at Harvard University, also sits on the boards of wireless equipment maker Trapeze Networks Inc., gas spectrometer maker Picarro Inc. and Linux cluster computing software maker Qlusters Inc., all of California.
Calls to Atlas Venture, Rockport Capital, KPCB and DAG Ventures were not returned.
Lilliputian was spun out of MIT in 2001 based on technology developed by founders Aleksander Franz and Samuel Schaevitz. The company is led by CEO Ken Lazarus, a doctoral g
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