COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 20, 2015
Nikola Labs, a joint partnership between IKOVE Venture Capital and The Ohio State University, is commercializing applications using antenna technology developed Ohio State Research Associate Professor Chi-Chih Chen, PhD. The company’s first product is a case for the iPhone 6 that is anticipated to extend battery life up to 25 percent.
In a world that is increasingly tuned in to the power of wireless power, Nikola’s antenna technology is small enough and efficient enough to integrate into devices that most people use and care about—starting with mobile phones. Nikola Labs plans to use energy transmitted during Wi-Fi connection and voice and data communications to charge wireless devices. The “secret sauce” of the antenna design is its efficiency in capturing and converting energy from radio frequency (RF) to DC power.
Nikola Labs, one of just 42 teams chosen from hundreds from around the world, was invited to compete in the prestigious Rice Business Plan, the world’s richest and largest student startup competition. The competition concluded this past weekend in Houston with the Nikola team reaching the semi-finals.
About Nikola Labs
Founded in October 2014, Nikola Labs is a partnership of The Ohio State University, Ikove Venture Partners, and Ohio State professors. Nikola Labs specializes in wireless power solutions and radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting for mobile devices. The company's energy harvesting system converts ambient RF signals – such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and LTE — into usable DC power suitable for sensors and devices. nikola.tech
Rice Business Plan Competition
The Rice Business Plan Competition is the world’s richest and largest graduate-level student startup competition. It is hosted and organized by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which is Rice University's internationally-recognized initiative devoted to the support of entrepreneurship, and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. This is the 15th year for the competition. In that time, it has grown from nine teams competing for $10,000 in prize money in 2001, to 42 teams from around the world competing for more than $1.5 million in cash and prizes.