UF Innovate | Ventures Announces Inaugural Investments; Follows JSR Corporation’s Repeat Investment in OLED Display Startup Mattrix Technologies
The University of Florida’s newly established venture fund, directed by UF Innovate | Ventures, has closed an investment in Mattrix Technologies. Repeat investor JSR Corporation is leading the $3M series A1 financing, which will support the joint development of production-ready materials for a new class of video display technology that promises to bring the true-to-life viewing experience of ultra-premium OLED products to everyday consumers.
Mattrix’s award-winning pixel technology, invented in Dr. Andrew Rinzler’s lab at UF, will allow manufacturers to repurpose aging LCD factories to instead produce higher-margin, premium OLED products while saving hundreds of millions of dollars in new capital costs.
“The intent of the venture fund was to help UF startups reach their full potential. We join Mattrix’s investment team as a following investor,” said Jim O’Connell, director of UF Innovate, the umbrella organization over Ventures and the other departments that provide an entire economic ecosystem for innovators and entrepreneurs. “Our hope is to highlight the work our faculty do, show UF’s commitment to the company’s success, and attract larger investors.”
Current investors in Mattrix Technologies also include Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (“Samsung Ventures”), the global investment arm of the Samsung Group, and JSR Corporation, a leading display materials supplier and innovator in global technology markets. Mattrix is now targeting local institutional investors for the remaining $1.25M to close this round. Collaborative partners interested in investing or licensing the company’s technology for commercialization should contact the CEO, Max Lemaitre.
“We are very excited to have Mattrix as one of our first portfolio companies. Their technology can truly revolutionize the flat-panel display industry,” said Jackson Streeter, M.D., director of UF Innovate | Ventures.
For its novel technology, Mattrix has exclusively licensed 16 U.S. patents from UF, with more than 35 claims and filings in Europe, Korea, China, and Japan. Mattrix is also a resident client of the University of Florida’s internationally recognized, award-winning business incubator, UF Innovate | The Hub.
“Mattrix is the type of company that can truly benefit from business incubation; it has a progressive technology; young, aggressive management; and a terrific staff,” said Mark Long, director of incubation services at UF. “Mattrix is taking full advantage of what The Hub has to offer: laboratories, collaborating, and networking. The company will grow fast and be a terrific win for Gainesville!”
“We are thrilled to have the University of Florida in our corner,” said Max Lemaitre, CEO of Mattrix Technologies. “We hope to be a positive example of how support for local start-up communities can pay dividends for university research in the long term.”
About UF Innovate | Ventures
Since 1985, more than 200 companies have formed by licensing technologies from the University of Florida. UF Innovate | Ventures seeks to fuel consistent growth in the number and quality of technology-based startup companies. These startups move UF inventions out of the lab and into the marketplace for the global good. Ventures supports startups by developing entrepreneurs, connecting companies to potential investors, and making equity investments.
About JSR Corporation
JSR Corporation is a multinational company employing more than 9,000 people worldwide and a leading materials supplier in a variety of technology-driven markets, driving materials innovation and creating value through materials to enrich society, people and the environment. JSR’s global network is headquartered in Tokyo (Japan) and has factories and offices in Europe, USA, China, Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand. JSR is a research-oriented organization that pursues close collaborations with leading innovators in a number of industries that are a key to the present and future welfare of human society: life-sciences, synthetic rubbers, electronic materials, display, and optical materials. For more information about JSR Corporation, please visit https://www.jsr.co.jp/jsr_e/.
About Mattrix Technologies
Founded in 2018, Mattrix Technologies is a semiconductor device company developing breakthrough pixel architectures for flat-panel displays. The company has pioneered a revolutionary OLET (organic light-emitting transistor) technology to enable the cost-effective production of large-area displays.
OLET is a new paradigm for emissive displays that solves the backplane challenges that have limited the adoption of large-area OLED displays. At the heart of this breakthrough is a proprietary pixel architecture that combines the drive transistor, storage capacitor, and light-emitting layers into a single element. This enables a full-aperture, bottom emission display that simplifies the manufacturing process, increases product lifetime, and panel brightness. For more information, visit www.mattrixtech.com.
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Reference:
- Markets and Markets (2017) OLED Market by Display Application (Smartphone, TV, Automotive, NTE), Panel Type (Rigid, Flexible), Technology, Size, Material (FMM RGB, WOLED), Lighting Application (General, Automotive), Panel Type, & Vertical, and Geography – Global Forecast to 2023. January. Available at https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/oled-market-200.html (Accessed: 06 May 2019).
Media Contact:
Sara Dagen
Communications Manager
UF Innovate
saradagen@ufl.edu
(352) 294-0998
https://innovate.research.ufl.edu
Company Contact:
Max Lemaitre, Ph.D.
CEO & Founder
Mattrix Technologies
m.g.lemaitre@mattrixtech.com
Cell: (847) 269-3692
Office: (352) 641-0557
www.mattrixtech.com
UF Innovate | Ventures:
Jackson Streeter
Director
UF Innovate | Ventures
jstreeter@ufl.edu
352-392-8929
https://innovate.research.ufl.edu./ventures/