NP Photonics raises $2M Series A2

NP Photonics, which has advanced optical-fiber sensor technology, announced an additional $2M investment in their Series A2 led by Shepherd Ventures (pdf here). This brings the total A2 raise to $7M.

Optical sensing technology, often drawing from breakthroughs developed originally for telecom purposes, are having increasing impacts on clean technology applications. Some new-technology optical sensors are being used to detect contamination in environmental conditions, manufacturing conditions, natural gas pipelines, etc. Others, such as the fiber-based sensors that NP Photonics are developing, are being used in a wide range of cleantech and non-cleantech applications -- on the cleantech side, for example, fiber-based strain detectors are being used to measure "sag" conditions on powerlines to predict outages, and to monitor underground storage tanks for leaks. There are other applications that are not directly cleantech-related as well. So optical sensors are a good example of the kind of platform technologies that are increasingly crossing across and into clean technology investing areas -- other examples would include M2M communications and manufacturing-focused software.