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Nanotechnology - Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Plastic Logic - Profile

Plastic Logic = iPod Technology for Newspapers

HQ: Cambridge, MA

Founded: November 2000

Management: Stuart Evans is CEO. He founded and was Managing Director of electronic tagging firm Cotag International. Professor Henning Sirringhaus is Chief Scientist and he is Hitachi Professor of Electron Device Physics at Cambridge University. He's a smart dude who did post-doctoral research at Princeton and has a PhD from the Institute of Solid State Physics of ETH Zurich.

Investors: In November 2005, the company closed $20M in Series C funding for a total investment to date of nearly $50M. New investors are BASF Venture Capital, Intel Capital, Morningside Technology Ventures and Quest for Growth. Previous investors are: Amadeus Capital, PolyTechnos Venture-Partners, Dow Venture Capital, Bank of America Equity Partners, Yasuda Enterprise Development Co., , Siemens Venture Capital, and Nanotech Partners.

Business Model: The company's technology enables new applications by printing electronics on thin, flexible plastic substrates. Plastic Logic plans to license out its technology for use in applications such as flexible e-paper displays. Plastic Logic's backplane technology initial focus is e-readers, such as e-books, e-dictionaries, e-maps, and e-newspapers). These displays will typically be wirelessly connected to cell phones and PDAs, allowing mobile users to access newspapers or blogs more easily than with a laptop. Later on, by 2008 or so, the company envisions video displayed on flexible e-paper.

Competitors: E-ink, SmartPaper, Gyricon, Fujitsu Laboratories.

Dirt: In the Steven Spielberg sci-fi movie Minority Report, Tom Cruise reads a newspaper where the ink changes as stories go to press. This is Plastic Logic's vision. We recently heard a newspaper executive argue that what his industry needs is an iPod for newspapers. Well, the people at Plastic Logic have been working to crack this nut for a decade and it appears they are now close. The company claims that it will launch its technology in 2005, but it is looking more look 2006 at this point. We also have no idea how much this stuff is going to cost. The devil is in the details, but we imagine the latest round of investors were impressed with they have seen recently.