Thursday, January 5, 2012

Nanocomp gets big funding for tiny tubes

By Rodney H. Brown

(Article updated 2:10 p.m. Jan. 5 to reflect the size of the funding round - Edit.)

Nanocomp Technologies Inc., a Concord, N.H., nanomaterials company, has raised $7.7 million of a planned $25 million new financing round, federal documents show.

While the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows that there were 38 backers of Nanocomp in this new round, none are named. Listed as a related person is board member Michael Gurau of CEI Community Ventures of Portland, Maine. CEI Community Ventures is also the only investor listed on the Nanocomp website. Also listed are board members Matthew Pierson, co-founder of Bedford, N.H.-based marketing company JitterGram Inc., and David Gruber, a director of State Street Corp.

Peter Antoinette, president and CEO of Nanocomp Technologies, was named a Mass High Tech All-Star in 2009. In November, Nanocomp was chosen to supply its yarn and sheet material made from carbon nanotubes to the U.S. government under a Department of Defense program that helps manufacturing companies meet anticipated federal needs for their products. At the time, Antoinette said that Nanocomp would be ready to expand into a new Merrimack, N.H., facility sometime in January or February, and will likely double its head count from the 47 employees it had then over the course of next year, mostly with high-tech manufacturing jobs.

When reached, Antoinette said that Nanocomp’s investors are made up of CEI, along with angel investors and high net worth individuals. A chunk of the remaining piece of the planned $25 million will be announced next week, coming from a strategic investor that Antoinette declined to name in advance of the announcement.

“It’s a minority position,” he said, adding, “It’s the first of what we hope is more than one strategic investor.”

The Merrimack expansion is pretty much on track, Antoinette said, although it would be more like February than January when employees started to fill up the space. The ambitious hiring goal is also on track, he said, and in 2012 alone, Nanocomp plans to hire an additional 50 employees, more than doubling the current staff size.

In August 2010, Nanocomp won a Phase 2 contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory under the Department of Defense’s Small Business Innovation Research program to study how its sheets of thin, super-tough carbon nanotubes can be used in such areas as lightweight aircraft parts and armor.

Antoinette did not immediately return a call for comment on the funding.