{"id":5219,"date":"2023-05-15T16:10:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-15T16:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/?p=5219"},"modified":"2024-08-20T12:51:09","modified_gmt":"2024-08-20T16:51:09","slug":"purdue-ventures-invests-in-wearable-communication-chip-company-ixana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/2023\/Q2\/purdue-ventures-invests-in-wearable-communication-chip-company-ixana","title":{"rendered":"Purdue Ventures invests in wearable communication chip company Ixana"},"content":{"rendered":"

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. —<\/p> \n

Purdue Ventures<\/a>, which manages multiple early stage investment funds to support Purdue University-connected startups, has invested in Ixana<\/a>, a company that provides wearable smart devices with the ability to securely communicate with touch. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Purdue Ventures\u2019 investment is part of a larger $3 million seed funding round for Ixana<\/a>, including backing from EvoNexus, Hack VC, Paradigm Shift Capital, Samsung Next and Uncorrelated Ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ixana\u2019s high-speed Wi-R silicon chip debuted during the January 2023 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas<\/a>. The technology is based on patented, published, peer-reviewed research conducted by Shreyas Sen<\/a>, the Elmore Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Purdue University\u2019s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering<\/a> and director of Purdue\u2019s Center for Internet of Bodies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen said the Wi-R wirelike wireless developed by Ixana has the potential to transform how wearable devices communicate with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe technology utilizes the conductive properties of the human body to guide tiny amounts of Electro-Quasistatic, or EQS, fields<\/a> around the person,\u201d Sen said. \u201cThis allows high-speed broadband communication among on-body devices to securely communicate at a fraction of the energy cost compared to conventional wireless communication technologies. This allows wearables to use computing in smartphones without affecting battery power or latency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen said the human body hurts traditional wireless communications by absorbing radiofrequency signals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRadio was not designed to communicate around humans because of the high water content in our bodies,\u201d Sen said. \u201cOn the other hand, the human body helps EQS fields, making communication efficient.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ultimate end users of Ixana\u2019s technology are everyday consumers of personal electronic devices such as smartphones, smartwatches and other upcoming on-body devices.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday, every wearable device has its own CPU and communicates only when required because wireless is inefficient,\u201d Sen said. \u201cWi-R provides a virtually free \u2018wire\u2019 that enables efficient distributed computing on the body; all wearables can piggyback off the computing in the smartphone or another body-worn hub without a significant battery or latency hit. This means every wearable device can have access to real-time AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWi-R reimagines the architecture of wearable computing from standalone devices on the body to a tightly coupled computer-communication network connected by the body itself to enable longer-lasting, more secure devices while making the network more intelligent. In the process, it helps increase the adoption of wearables in the coming decades<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ixana co-founder and CEO Angik Sarkar said artificial intelligence has advanced by leaps and bounds in the last few years, but it forms only a small part of people\u2019s everyday lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe challenge is we largely interact with AI when we look at a screen or through voice prompts,\u201d Sarkar said. \u201cIxana’s long-term goal is to enable our brain to interact with AI in real-time, all day long, while being in our physical world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarkar said the Purdue Ventures\u2019 investment will impact Ixana in several ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIxana\u2019s North Star is to make Wi-R ubiquitous in devices such as smartphones, smartwatches and AR\/VR headsets,\u201d Sarkar said. \u201cPurdue Ventures’ investment moves Ixana closer to that goal. Further, the backing of Purdue Ventures helped leverage more investors to invest in Ixana. Being associated with Purdue University and Purdue Ventures means more partners and investors believe in the technology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ixana has several ties to Purdue, including licensing Sen\u2019s patented research through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization<\/a>. Sarkar and Shovan Maity, Ixana\u2019s co-founder and head of research, both earned their doctoral degrees in electrical and computer engineering at Purdue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riley Gibb, associate director of Purdue Ventures, said Ixana\u2019s strong connections to Purdue research is a key qualifier for investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe also recognize Ixana has taken a technological lead by creating the world\u2019s first high-speed Wi-R silicon chip,\u201d Gibb said. \u201cThis innovation and its multiple applications will have an impact upon the adoption of wearable technology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April Ixana won the Startup of the Year category in the Mira Awards<\/a>, which recognize the achievements of companies, individuals and organizations in Indiana\u2019s tech industry. A three-minute video of David Yang, product engineer at Ixana, accepting the award<\/a> is online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About Purdue Ventures<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

With almost $20 million under current management, Purdue Ventures<\/a> manages multiple pools of capital in collaboration with the university ecosystem and local corporations, enabling Purdue startups to improve the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About Ixana<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ixana<\/a> is developing high-speed human-computer interfaces with all-day, real-time, distributed AI. Licensing Purdue University intellectual property through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization<\/a>, Ixana has developed Wi-R, a non-radiative communication technology for wearables.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n Writer\/Media contact:<\/strong>\u00a0Steve Martin,\u00a0sgmartin@prf.org<\/a>\u00a0
Sources:<\/strong>\u00a0Riley Gibb,\u00a0rtgibb@prf.org<\/a>
Shreyas Sen,\u00a0shreyas@ixana.ai<\/a>
Angik Sarkar,\u00a0angik@ixana.ai<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue Ventures, which manages multiple early stage investment funds to support Purdue University-connected startups, has invested in Ixana, a company that provides wearable smart devices with the ability to securely communicate with touch.  Purdue Ventures\u2019 investment is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,316],"tags":[],"department":[24,80],"source":[35],"purdue_today_topic":[72],"coauthors":[44],"class_list":["post-5219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-prf","department-research-foundation","department-technology-commercialization","source-purdue-research-foundation","purdue_today_topic-general"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5222,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219\/revisions\/5222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5219"},{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=5219"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=5219"},{"taxonomy":"purdue_today_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/purdue_today_topic?post=5219"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}