UbiQD- Leveraging quantum dots to improve crop yield & harvesting sunlight to generate electricity

Show Notes‍

My guest today is Hunter McDaniel, the founder and CEO of UbiQD, a startup exploiting quantum dots to improve agricultural yield in greenhouses and generating electricity by embedding them into windows. In this episode of Lab to startup, we talk about how non-toxic quantum dots were developed at Los Alamos; the evolution of the use cases; fundraising trials and tribulations; the complications of convincing multiple stakeholders in the solar space; and how Hunter’s grit and persistence helped in building this startup.

Show Notes:

• UbiQD: https://ubiqd.com
• Using quantum dots to modify sunlight to enhance photosynthetic efficiency and boost fruit and flower production
• Help plants get more from the sun in a greenhouse and boost crop yields and quality without the cost or energy impact of lighting
• UbiQD solar windows are made from glass laminated with a quantum dot doped interlayer to generate electricity
• Translated research during his postdoc at Los Alamos national labs to products at his startup
• Licensed some technology from MIT and the rest from Los Alamos
• Technology evolved from trying to solve the problem of toxicity from cadmium and lead in quantum dots
• Swapped Cadmium with Indium and Copper
• Once the toxicity problem was solved, the hope was that companies would line up for the new solution
• Initially funded by NSF SBIR grant (10th attempt)
• While generating electricity from windows was funded, NSF I-Corp program helped find the greenhouse market
• Increases crop yield by 10-30%; 6 Watts/sq.foot while maintaining transparency of windows (half of traditional solar cells)
• https://ubigro.com
• Understand all the people that had to be convinced to adopt the products
• Ask for advice and you get money
• Investors: Breakout labs, Scout Ventures, Keiretsu Forum, Sun Mountain Capital, Epic Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Arcview Collective Fund, Nanosys.
• Relations with Nanosys, NASA, SpaceX, US Air Force
• Contact: https://ubiqd.com/contact/

Listen Now

https://www.labtostartup.com/ubiqd-leveraging-quantum-dots-to-improve-crop-yield-harvesting-sunlight-to-generate-electricity/