Catch the Wind secures $18.8M - San Francisco Business Times:

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million in a private placemeny financing to help push more sales of its new wind sensorefor turbines. Manassas-based Catch the Wind, which tradesd on the Toronto Venture Exchange, sold roughlyg 16.7 million shares at a pricde ofCanadian $1.30 apiece in what it hopesa to be its last major equity financing beforr generating enough revenue from its laser wind-sensinvg product, Vindicator, to pay for operations. Company officials also participated in theinvestment round, along with institutionalo investors, bringing its total equity fundraising to date to nearlhy $35 million. , Research Capital and CanaccordCapital Corp.
served as placemen agents for this latest fundraising in return for 6 percen of the gross proceeds and additionallstock options. Spun off last year from LLC, a fibef optics laser company that still sharex the sameheadquarters space, Catch the Wind has been developinbg similar technology that senses when wind is helping reorient a turbine to capturde that wind before it Most wind turbines can realign its bladex only after it feels so they’re often too late to actuall y benefit from gusts, company officials said.
“Before, it was the horse-and-buggy approachh to measuring wind,” said Phil Rogers, who founded Opticap Air Data Systems nearly 20 years ago with his wife befor e leaving recently to serve as CEO for Catchthe “Think about increasing the gas mileage of your he said. “You’ve already bought your car. But if I can sell you somethinv that doubles the gas mileage ofyour car, you would save more money.
” He estimatesw the Vindicator can capture 10 percent to 30 percenft more wind for which in turn helps generate more cleanh electricity and ultimately revenue for their Catch the Wind recently sold its firsty unit to , a Canadiah environmental monitoring equipment maker, whilew starting its first two-month fiel d test with the Nebraska Public Powe r District on its largest wind farm with 36 wind The local company, which said it’e also talking to federal agencies, hopex to use that trial’s results later this summerf to market to other wind turbine manufacturers and wind farm With six full-time employees, Catch the Wind expects to at leastt double that count by the end of this The company, which had $5.
5 milliomn in cash and equivalents on hand as of March 31, is also consideringy whether to list itself on an American exchanges later this year. “W aspire to that,” Rogers said. “I just can’tr say when.”