The Rice Alliance, affiliated with Rice University in Houston, held its seventh (yes, seventh) annual Nanotechnology Venture Forum on Thursday, and for some reason, it had a familiar ring to it. There were companies claiming to be able to make smaller, stronger, more efficient things, but commercialization still seems to be a nagging issue, despite the hype of the sector a few years back.
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For example, Metal Oxide Technologies Inc. is raising $7 million to $10 million this year to produce high-temperature superconducting wire at commercial price levels, a nanotechnology that landed Dr. Paul Chu of the Texas Center for Superconductivity on magazine covers 10 years ago. " 'Zillion-dollar markets' is what we like to see," Rice Alliance managing director Brad Burke quipped after the company's presentation.
There's hope at least some of them will find funding. Ray Johnson, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Lockheed Martin Corp., said he was open to "partnerships," especially in the areas of communications for his biggest client, the Department of Defense. "One day we'll see a lot more voice-activated devices, like Captain Kirk before he became a cigar-chomping lawyer," he said to laughs from an audience apparently heavy with "Boston Legal" fans. "I'm convinced nanotech will be ubiquitous in all of our products," he added.
A panel of venture capitalists all said they were looking to make investments, including Texas Nanotech Ventures -- run by oilman Boone Pickens' son Tom -- and Epic Ventures (formerly Wasatch Venture Fund) and Kenda Capital (formerly Shell Technology Ventures). "The deals I'm looking for will solve problems in the marketplace," said Katie Szczepaniak Rice, Epic's director of nanotech/cleantech research. If only they could get to market. - Claire Poole
