Vancouver’s Light-Based Technologies Inc. (LBT) has landed US$7.5 million in venture funding from San Francisco’s VantagePoint Venture Partners and Vancouver’s Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital.
Further fuelling LBT’s growth prospects is news that the company has hired Art Aylesworth to be its CEO. Aylesworth is the former CEO of Carmanah Technologies, a company that he grew in five years from a dozen staff to 250 people.
“Until this point, [LBT has] been on the far side of research and development,” GreenAngel Energy CEO Bob de Wit told Business in Vancouver. “Now, they’re moving to the commercialization stage, and Art’s expertise is in commercialization and ramping up sales.
“There are some distribution deals that they’ve closed recently and that’s a lot to do with Art and his efforts. The company is really starting to see results.”
LBT develops controls for LED lighting. De Wit explained that technology companies are racing to produce LED lights that can do things, such as dim, while in standard lamp sockets.
LED lights are in demand because they consume less power and produce different shades of light than ordinary light bulbs.
“You can buy LED Christmas lights, for example, and they will work in a standard socket and use less energy, but they don’t do all the other things that LED lights can do,” de Wit said.
LBT would not make the light bulbs, but instead commercialize its technology through third parties such as General Electric.
Glen Korstrom
Twitter: GlenKorstrom