Ampy raises $875,000 in venture
funding
JOHN PLETZ ON TECH
Ampy
has come a long way in the past year.
Back
then, the startup was relying on Kickstarter to raise money to build its
product, a portable device that uses kinetic energy to charge consumer
electronics.
Now
it has raised $875,000 in seed funding from the Chicago-based Clean Energy
Trust and Palo Alto, Calif.-based NewGen Ventures, as well as angel investors
Howard Tullman, Feedburner co-founder Steve Olechowski and John DiNardi,
founder of Carol Stream-based LED lighting maker Norlux.
Ampy,
which was launched by three Northwestern graduate students, raised about
$300,000 on Kickstarter and brought in more than 2,500
pre-orders. The Evanston-based company has six employees.
"The
funding allows us to do two things: scale production and pursue integrating our
technology directly with some wearable devices manufacturers," said CEO
Tejas Shastry. "Our vision is to be the platform charging technology for
wearable devices."