QPT appoints new CEO for funding boost
GaN startup QPT has appointed Rupert Baines as its new CEO from April.
Baines, who was previously CEO at UltraSoc which was acquired by Siemens, has been an advisor to QPT and will join the UK startup on April 1st.
The company recently won ABB’s global Power Density Start-up Challenge 2023 for Motor Drive Products (above, with Baines second from left).
“QPT is one of the companies I’ve been helping for a couple of years as I’ve known the founder for years. The ABB competition was a mutual job interview, talking to customers about the technology,” Baines tells eeNews Europe.
The company is currently raising funds on crowd funding site CrowdCube. “The point of the crowd cube is to fund the next 12 to 18 months and then we’ll do a big VC round based on customer traction,” he said.
“The vision is big. Power electronics is an absolutely huge market and incredibly important. At the moment the interesting thing is there is innovation but its probably disproportionately low, the ratio of innovation to growth is strikingly off balance and there needs to be more things happening,” he said.
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QPT has adapted technology to allow GaN transistors to be used at higher frequencies for smaller, more efficient power systems.
“We get access to the PDKs and using these devices in unusual ways where we talk about the Spice models to really deliver on the potential of GaN,” he said. “We have an incredibly strong patent position, really powerful IP position. One is granted and another 11 are in process and a lot of those are fundamental. There is so much in the physics of GaN devices and the opportunities are so powerful and there is huge scope to stake out that IP by applying ideas from other areas that are new to power.”
“The technology can be used just about anywhere. The first segment is industrial, making motors more efficient, smaller and higher performance. ABB is obviously keen to work with us and it’s a joint development but we do have a couple of other evaluations live with other companies in that space.”
“Our qGaN technology enables drives controls or Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) to be made much smaller as we achieve the best power densities and efficiencies of any current technology. We do this by being able hard-switch 650V GaN transistors from GaN Systems incredibly fast at only 1 to 2ns to slash energy losses,” said Rob Gwynne, CTO and founder of QPT.
“QPT’s next generation GaN technology shrinks the size of a VFD to around a twentieth of the size so that it can be integrated beside the motor,” he said.
“The need for big, costly filters that Si, SiC or slow existing GaN alternatives require and preclude easy integration is also eliminated further reducing the overall size which further helps integration. Companies think that they have to move from Si or GaN to SiC for their next generation products without realising its limitations. Our qGaN technology means that they can easily leapfrog over SiC to a solution that delivers better energy savings with minimal redesign work and a roadmap for further generations of their products as we can drive GaN to ultra-high speeds for more energy savings that nothing else can achieve.”
Baines is also looking at the automotive market. The company already works with transistors from GaN Systems, recently acquired by Infineon Technologies for its automotive business, and the co-founder of GaN Systems, Geoff Haynes, is an active advisor to QPT.
“Yes, automotive is in the medium term. Although the core technology is based on GaN we are a system company and we use transistors from other suppliers such as Infineon and Cambridge GaN but we need 1200V GaN [devices] for automotive.”
The company is building systems with discrete devices initially, with research and development in Cambridge and in Portugal with a plan for a custom ASIC with higher integration. It is recruiting at both sites.
“The UK presence gives us access to the talent tool and finding and in Portugal gives us a whole new talent pool, and other funding such as EIB, EIC, and intersection through the Horizon programme,” he said.
“The plan we are building now is to build this up into a huge company employing people in the IUK, Portugal and around the world. There is a $60bn market for motors, data centre power and electric vehicles so that would be a vast successful business and that would be a fantastic thing to achieve,” said Baines.
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