Nano Disrupts

Yesterday evening, StoreDot revealed their nano-tech battery prototype, which charged CEO’s Dr Doron Myersdorf’s smart phone in under 2 minutes at Think Next, an annual event held by Microsoft Ventures, Israel.

Held in Tel Aviv at the new Municipal Sports Arena (which was once the site of a drive-in movie theatre), Myersdorf came on stage with 8% battery. By the end of his 2-minute slot, his phone had fully recharged.

In that time, Myersdorf also announced the company’s plan to move into the automotive market, with an electric-car battery that can power a vehicle for 200 kilometres before recharging – a process that takes only 5 minutes.

StoreDot, which recently closed a $42 million Series B round of fundraising, uses nano-technology to develop batteries that are cheaper and faster to recharge than those currently available. More importantly, the application of StoreDot’s technology is not limited to any one sector.

The company is looking into nano-medicine, which is not surprising given that the technology emerged from research into Alzheimer’s disease at Tel Aviv University. In an interview with Tech Crunch, Myersdorf explained that ‘We were able to take the same peptides [amino-acid chains] that participate in biological processes in our body… to create nano-crystals — these are stable, robust spheres.’ These nano-crystals, only 2 nanometers in diameter, can be used in a semi-conductor device, battery or display. ‘We are talking about new types of materials that can be introduced into different types of devices,’ Myersdorf said.

Such wide application has attracted the likes of Roman Abramovich, whose private asset management company, Millhouse LLC invested $10 million in the company last year. Previously intending to raise $20 million during Series B, Myersdorf and his team are well on their way to disrupting more than the market of mobile phone chargers.

However, for the average person, a phone that recharges in less than 2 minutes is well worth waiting for. StoreDot expects their phone batteries to be available commercially by 2017, if not sooner, retailing at about $27.