Canatu Oy, a leading edge nanotechnology company commercializing carbon nanomaterial thin films for the electronics, announced on 13 March close of a 12 Million USD investment round led by Troika Ventures. Existing Canatu investors Inventure, Infosto and Tekes also participated in the round. Canatu’s first products are flexible, robust and environmentally friendly transparent conductor films and touch sensors.
The investment round consisted of a USD 9 million equity investment and Tekes R&D grant in the amount of USD 3 milion. This was Canatu’s third investment round since 2007 and brings the total equity investment in the company to USD 15 million USD.
“Canatu is one of the world’s most promising nanotechnology companies providing disruptive technology to fast growing global touch sensor and display markets. We believe that Canatu will play a significant role in the future display industry”, says Artyom Yukhin, the Managing Director of Troika Ventures.
Canatu plans to to use the funding to finalize its volume manufacturing line for conductive films and touch sensors in Helsinki, Finland. The company also plans to add significantly more resources to key business development activities.
“This funding allows us to provide our customers the needed manufacturing capacity”, CEO Vuohelainen says. “We can now take quick initiative to meet customer expectations and also to add local presence near our customers. And with the substantial financial resources of Troika behind us, we will be ready for fast scale-up to larger volume production when customers need us to. This could already be the case in 2014.”
Troika Ventures is a leading venture capital firm headquartered in Moscow, Russia. With $200 million under management, Troika Ventures concentrates on three investment segments: information technology, applied materials science, and software. Troika’s portfolio companies include Iiko, TeraSense, Biomimedica, Luxera, Enhanced Spectrometry, and Safe ‘N Sec.
