Catch the Wind secures $18.8M - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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million in a private placement financing to help push more sales of its new wind sensodrfor turbines. Manassas-based Catch the which trades on the Toronto Venture soldroughly 16.7 million shares at a price of Canadiam $1.30 apiece in what it hopeas to be its last major equity financing before generating enoughg revenue from its laser wind-sensing Vindicator, to pay for operations. Companyt officials also participated in the investment along withinstitutional investors, bringingh its total equity fundraising to date to nearl $35 million. , Researchb Capital Corp. and Canaccorrd Capital Corp.
served as placement agentes for this latest fundraising in return for 6 percenyt of the gross proceeds and additionalpstock options. Spun off last year from LLC, a fibee optics laser company that still shares the sameheadquarterse space, Catch the Wind has been developing similar technologgy that senses when wind is helping reorient a turbine to capture that wind befores it passes. Most wind turbines can realign its bladezs only after it feels so they’re often too late to actually benefitg from gusts, company officials said.
“Before, it was the horse-and-bugguy approach to measuring saidPhil Rogers, who founded Optical Air Data Systems nearluy 20 years ago with his wife before leavingb recently to serve as CEO for Catch the “Think about increasing the gas mileage of your he said. “You’ve already boughy your car. But if I can sell you something that doublesz the gas mileage ofyour car, you woulf save more money.” He estimates the Vindicatord can capture 10 percent to 30 percent more wind for turbines, which in turn helps generatr more clean electricity and ultimately revenure for their operators.
Catch the Wind recently sold its firsf unitto , a Canadian environmental monitoring equipment maker, while starting its firsr two-month field test with the Nebraskaa Public Power District on its largest wind farm with 36 wind The local company, whicyh said it’s also talking to federal agencies, hopes to use that trial’w results later this summer to market to othef wind turbine manufacturers and wind farm With six full-time employees, Catch the Wind expects to at leastr double that count by the end of this The company, which had $5.5 million in cash and equivalentss on hand as of March 31, is also considering whether to list itself on an Americanj exchange later this year.
“We aspire to Rogers said. “I just can’t say when.”