beeOLED raises EUR 13.3m from world-class deep tech investors for a Series A funding round
eCAPITAL NEWSbeeOLED, a Dresden-based deep-tech startup, today announced it has raised EUR 13.3m for a Series A funding co-led by eCAPITAL and Innovation Industries. The round was joined by KBC Focus Fund as well as existing investors M Ventures (the corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany), HTGF, TGFS, and JBN-Invest.
Founded by veterans of the OLED industry and led by serial entrepreneur and Novaled co-founder Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth, the company is aiming to solve the last major challenge of OLED displays: efficient and stable deep-blue emitters. The company will officially emerge from stealth mode presenting their progress with a presentation at the key industry event “International Meeting on Information Display” (IMID) in Busan, South Korea on August 25th.
Today, deep blue emitters in OLED displays are either stable (fluorescent emitters) or efficient (phosphorescent emitters, TADF emitters), but no market-ready technology delivers both of these important metrics at the same time. beeOLED’s intra-metallic emission technology has proven high stability and high efficiency when employed in other display technologies in the past, but, so far, had not been useable in OLEDs. The beeOLED team managed for the first time to make such molecules compatible with the vacuum processing technology used in high-volume OLED display manufacturing today – a technical breakthrough, protected by several patents, that was made possible by the team’s extensive know-how in ligand design.
Our technology seamlessly integrates into existing OLED structures and established OLED display manufacturing technology. The technology allows for 100 percent internal quantum efficiency, a prerequisite for the highest power efficiency in OLED displays.
Carsten Rothe, CTO, beeOLED
It's incredible to see that after all these years, this critical issue for OLED displays still hasn’t been solved. This creates a huge market potential for a materials provider. We are very happy that we not only found the solution to that issue but also were able to team up with such an amazing group of investors to fund the commercialization of this technology.
Dr. Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth, CEO, beeOLED
As an early investor in the OLED space, we have seen many startups that aimed to solve this last major challenge of OLED displays. But beeOLED was able to convince us as they not only have the most promising solution but also the experienced team needed to bring such a disruptive technology to the market, especially with key experience in the OLED-materials field.
Dr. Paul-Josef Patt, Managing Partner, eCAPITAL AG
Increasing the efficiency of the blue emitter in OLED displays is a key driver to reduce energy consumption in modern TVs, tablets and smartphones. Our investment into beeOLED is therefore in line with our mission to support ground-breaking deep tech startups for a more sustainable future.
Tom van Vuren, Director, Innovation Industries
About beeOLED
beeOLED was founded in 2020 by OLED (organic-light-emitting-diodes) industry veterans Carsten Rothe (CTO, ex Novaled, Idemitsu) and Volodymyr Senkovskyy (COO, ex Novaled) with the goal to solve the last big challenge of OLED displays. Led by serial entrepreneur and Novaled co-founder Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth, the deep tech startup develops an efficient & stable deep-blue emitter to improve displays in phones, tablets, laptops, TVs and other displays. Its technology is based on making elementary emission from atoms fit for use in today’s vacuum processed OLED displays. Please visit our website for further information www.beeoled.com.
About eCAPITAL
Founded in 1999, eCAPITAL is an entrepreneur-led venture capital investor focusing on early- and growth-stage deep-tech companies with a positive impact on society. eCAPITAL is based in Germany and invests with its own funds with a total volume of over € 340 million in the areas of Sustainability, Enterprise Software, Cybersecurity, IoT and New Materials. In addition to financial resources, eCAPITAL offers its portfolio companies strategic support and access to an international network of entrepreneurs, scientists, investors and founders and was lead investor in various deep-tech companies such as sonnen, Novaled and Jedox, which were sold very successfully to international corporates or investors. www.ecapital.vc
Contact
beeOLED GmbH
Eileen Berger
PR Representative
Niedersedlitzer Str. 75c
01257 Dresden
Tel.: +49 351 85070500
Email: info@beeoled.com
eCAPITAL ENTREPRENEURIAL PARTNERS AG
Bettina Schäfer
Hafenweg 24
48155 Münster, Germany
Tel.: +49 251 70 37 67 0
Email: info@ecapital.vc
www.ecapital.vc