After detecting opportunities to expand its business globally , radar-platform provider Echodyne in Washington State has made a series of moves in the past year aimed at opening up new markets for the company .
“ We used to get more calls from U . S . companies ,” said CEO and founder Eben Frankenberg . “ Now those phone calls are coming from Europe , coming from Asia , coming from Australia and New Zealand .”
The majority of the moves involved Echodyne ’ s EchoGuard radars , which users can deploy in numbers to create surveillance networks – particularly for drones .
“ All the markets that we operate in are growing , which is good ,” Frankenberg said . “ But security and defense are growing more quickly .”
Kirkland-based Echodyne has an elite Northwest tech industry pedigree .
It was spun out of Intellectual Ventures , the company created by Microsoft ’ s original chief technology officer to buy up and license patents for development . Microsoft founders Bill Gates and the late Paul Allen were early investors , and Gates and Allen ’ s Vulcan Capital were part of a $ 20 million Series C fundraising round in 2019 . Madrona Venture Group – which has funded high-profile Seattle companies like Amazon and Redfin – is another investor .
But unlike those software companies , Echodyne builds things , using metamaterials .
Without diving too deep into the physics , we can think of metamaterials as composite materials – metals or plastics or both – that can be engineered to block , absorb , bend or enhance electromagnetic waves that bounce off them or emanate from them .
That ability to enhance an electromagnetic wave has allowed Echodyne to use metamaterials to build highly effective radars that are about the size of the smallest iPads and are lighter , cheaper and draw less power than previous radar designs .
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