With products already commercially available, the investment will also enable Flusso to widen its product and technology portfolio.
Flow meters are traditionally used in industrial, automotive, and medical products to monitor the movement of gas or liquid. The market is worth $8 billion annually but is highly fragmented in terms of technologies and applications. Innovation has been lacking in consumer products in particular.
[[{"fid":"286805","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","alignment":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Flusso flow sensor next to a pencil to show scale","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"Flusso flow sensor next to a pencil to show scale"},"link_text":false,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"default","alignment":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Flusso flow sensor next to a pencil to show scale","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"Flusso flow sensor next to a pencil to show scale"}},"attributes":{"alt":"Flusso flow sensor next to a pencil to show scale","title":"Flusso flow sensor next to a pencil to show scale","style":"float: right;","class":"media-element file-default","data-delta":"1"}}]]Flusso’s patent-protected technology enables flow sensors to be significantly smaller (see image right) and made less expensively, while adding enhanced functionality and without compromising performance. The result enables direct flow sensing in a wide range of both existing and future mass-market consumer products. These include heating and ventilation systems, filtration units, and respiratory medical devices—for which flow-sensing components were previously too big, expensive, or difficult to integrate.
Flusso, which spun out of the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge in 2016, was co-founded by Professor Florin Udrea (co-founder of CamSemi, Cambridge CMOS Sensors, Cambridge Microelectronics, and Cambridge GaN Devices), Professor Julian Gardner (co-founder of Cambridge CMOS Sensors and Sorex), Dr John Coull, and Dr Andrea De Luca, all sensor experts with extensive experience in the semiconductor industry. They have been joined by Robert Swann, an experienced entrepreneur specialising in early-stage semiconductor companies, as chairman, and Dr Cleopatra Cabuz, formerly VP of Technology and Partnerships in Honeywell’s Safety and Productivity Solutions division.
Flusso’s technology uses a CMOS MEMS silicon platform, and is packaged and assembled using a pure microelectronics approach. This provides both performance and scalability of manufacturing in tens of millions of parts per month.
Andrea De Luca, Founder and CEO at Flusso, said: “The energy efficiency of many products could be greatly improved if they incorporated gas and flow sensors, but companies are unable to do so due to cost, size, or manufacturing constraints. Our vision is to bring flow- and gas-sensing technologies to all these products. This funding round helps us to scale up and bring our vision to reality”.