A Kitchener-based tech startup has announced a massive new round of funding, which it says will help it develop new products and advance its business.
Thalmic Labs said Monday that it had raised US$120 million, or more than $150 million Canadian, in funding. Leading investors include Intel Capital – the investment arm of tech giant Intel – as well as Fidelity Investments Canada and Amazon’s Alexa Fund.
“This new investment will help us realize our vision for the next era of computing, where the lines between humans and digital technology become increasingly blurred,” the company’s co-founders, Aaron Grant, Matthew Bailey and Stephen Lake, said in a statement.
Thalmic is known for the Myo motion control armband, which was developed in 2012.
It is now used in more than 150 countries, for both virtual reality applications and real-world tasks like training amputees to use prosthetic limbs.
The co-founders say they “have new products in the pipeline” and call Myo “just the beginning” of what they hope to accomplish.
In an interview with CTV Kitchener, Lake said that the funding would be put toward the development of those new products.
“They … believe and share that vision we have of where human-computer interaction can go and where those products we’re building can end up,” he said.
The company is also expanding to a new office in San Francisco, as well as hiring more personnel for its facility on Charles Street in Kitchener.
In total, the company expects to double the size of its current workforce within the next year.
According to Communitech, US$120M is the largest amount of funding any Waterloo Region-based company has raised in a decade.