It’s been a long haul for pureLiFi, but having just secured more than $10 million from the Scottish National Investment Bank, it’s now pursuing a global rollout of its technology.
The Edinburgh-based firm uses light to transmit data rather than conventional radio frequency systems such as Wi-Fi or cellular-based communications.
“The Bank’s investment will help us achieve our vision to connect everyone and everything with LiFi,” said pureLiFi CEO Alistair Banham in a statement. “We introduced our technology to the world from Scotland and it is important for us to grow our company and ecosystem from here.”
The vision is for Scotland to be a recognized center of excellence for LiFi, he added.
The Scottish bank’s investment will enable pureLiFi to further develop new technologies while opening up additional markets in areas such as mobile phones, tablets, wearables and other connected devices, the company said.
PureLiFi, which has worked with the likes of Cisco, was formed in 2012 as a spin-off from the University of Edinburgh, where the “father of LiFi” Harald Haas served as chair of the Mobile Communications department.
Haas gained notoriety through a 2011 TED talk where he described how light can be configured to transmit far more data than a cellular tower and do so more efficiently.
According to the company, LiFi is complementary to Wi-Fi technology, making it work better when the two are combined.