A big shot in the armband

Just one year after graduating from the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering, three young entrepreneurs have secured $14.5 million in funding for their company, Thalmic Labs. The startup has already pre-sold 30,000 armbands that control computers and smartphones with gestures.

“The funding will be used to fuel continued growth, further product development of MYO, and develop future products and technologies,” said Stephen Lake, CEO and co-founder of Thalmic Labs. “This new investment will help us realize our vision of a new era of computing, where the lines between humans and digital technology become increasingly blurred.”

Lake and fellow alumni, Aaron Grant and Matthew Bailey, created the MYO armband by combining their knowledge of biomedical research, engineering and machine learning. This most recent funding came from a financing round led by Spark Capital and Intel Capital.

The MYO takes the wearer’s movements and the electrical activity of the muscles and turns it into useful information. That means while wearing the armband you can remotely control an object, interact with a PowerPoint presentation and play video games all without a remote.

"We are at the beginning of a revolution in how we interface with computers, and the team at Thalmic Labs has made some truly disruptive breakthroughs,” said Nabeel Hyatt of Spark Capital.

VeloCity grads

With a staff of 20, the team is working hard to ensure a smooth production of the MYO armbands due to their purchasers by the end of the year. This growing team is soon relocating from the VeloCity Garage to another space in Kitchener.

“VeloCity has been a huge supporter of us, as has the broader Waterloo startup community/ecosystem,” says Lake. “It was a great opportunity to continue building the community and expand the focus on ‘hard tech’ entrepreneurship, which we feel strongly about.”

The company recently took part in the Y Combinator program in Mountainview, CA. While he missed the shared workspace of the VeloCity Garage, Lake notes that at Y Combinator there was a different kind of excitement because of the access to so many large, successful tech companies in the Silicon Valley.

“We’re actively recruiting for over 30 people, from software engineers to supply chain and manufacturing expertise” said Lake. “The jobs are all in Kitchener-Waterloo. Why go anywhere else? The region is seeing incredible growth and exciting stuff is happening right here.”