Thermoelectric was assigned to the dustbin of engineering, too costly and unreliable to swap for traditional cooling systems. Phononic founder Tony Atti says he has a product that shows thermo’s time has come, and deals with Unilever and Pepsi Bottling to prove it.
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, a board member, bought into that idea, staking $159 million at a recent valuation of around $280 million, according to Pitchbook.estimates it generated $10 million in revenue last year thanks to sales of cooling components, refrigerators and freezers. The company declined to comment on its sales. Then came computing breakthroughs like the microchip. The same 1980s technology that enabled Intel engineers to pack tiny transistors on silicon chips also made solar panels thinner and led to light-emitting diodes for light bulbs, TVs and computer screens.
Phononic's chips take up much less room than bulky mechanical compressors, making more room for products.During this time, he met University of Oklahoma professor Patrick McCann, who was researching thermoelectric cooling. Inspired, Atti and McCann cofounded Phononic in 2009 with Matt Trevithick, then a partner at venture capital firm Venrock. The founders set up in Durham, backed by $2 million from Venrock and a $3 million grant from the Department of Energy.
Phononic signed deals with companies such as Raleigh, North Carolina-based UNC Rex Healthcare and was soon shipping several thousand of its Evolve brand medical or lab refrigerators units a year. Competitors took notice, and in 2018, $112 billion market cap companysigned an exclusive deal to use Phononic’s chips in two refrigerator lines whose units cost $3,100 to over $6,000.
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