Kymeta Corp. was spun out of Intellectual Ventures, a patent holding company, based on the metamaterials technology for electronic beam steering developed in that company’s labs. It was launched in 2013 with a $12m investment from Bill Gates, Lux Capital and Liberty Global. Before the year was out, it closed a $50m round from existing investors plus Osage University and Kresge Foundation. Early in 2014, they won a $6.2m engineering contract with Inmarsat to accelerate that company’s product development. Over the next two years, it entered a series of partnerships: with Intelsat for antennas optimized for EpicNG; with Airbus and Intellian to integrate Kymeta technology into maritime antennas; and with Sharp to manufacture Kymeta antennas using glass-on-glass technology pioneered for flat-panel displays. Commercial tests were begun in 2015 with Intelsat, including an 8,000-mile demonstration drive in a connected car. In 2016, Panasonic agreed to order a large number of antennas for maritime use, and Kymeta closed another $62m in funding to finance its commercial introduction in 2017.

The Kymeta Corporation was named one of the 2017 Rising Five in the Ground Systems Sector.

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