Motorola Venture Arm Puts $6.5 Million Into MicroPower Technologies

San Diego’s MicroPower Technologies, founded in 2008 to develop ultra-low power wireless video surveillance products, said it has landed the first installment of a $6.5 million round of funding from Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and an undisclosed private fund.

The Series C funding represents MicroPower’s first institutional investment. Motorola Solutions Venture Capital is the investment arm of Schaumburg, IL-based Motorola Solutions, the company that retained Motorola’s mainstay radio, bar-code scanner, and RFID business in last year’s separation from Motorola’s mobile business.

MicroPower was initially funded by Southern California’s Tech Coast Angels, and was one of the first startups in San Diego to take advantage of the free EvoNexus incubator program established by CommNexus, a local nonprofit industry group.

The company says it plans to use the funding to step-up marketing of its wireless surveillance camera and related technology. The company’s flagship product, the Rugged-i wireless video camera, eliminates data and power cables and substantially cuts installation costs, such as the expense of pulling cable.

MicroPower has targeted commercial and government customers, including border protection, retail, education, and public utility markets. The company also says its wireless networking technology could be incorporated into wearable video cameras by law enforcement, paramedics, first responders, and military personnel.

Last year, MicroPower was named as a high tech award winner in the communications products and services category by the San Diego chapter of Tech America and as 2011 new product of the year by Security Products magazine.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.