UK start-up Polight shuts down over technology doubtsHarry YeatesPolight Technologies, the Cambridge start-up developing materials for holographic data storage (HDS), has closed down.
The company experienced difficulties with its technology, based on materials called chalcogenides, and decided developing a product would take too long, or might never succeed. In July Polight said it was exploring alternative applications for its materials.
The closure affects seven employees, and will see the cash remaining from $5.4m of funding secured a year ago returned to investors, who include the Cambridge Gateway Fund and Japanese firm NIF Ventures.
The technology that we had developed was going to take too long, said Michael Ledzion, Polight's CEO. There were some fundamental issues with the laws of physics, so we decided the best thing to do would be to return the money to shareholders. There's a lot of money to return, it's entirely solvent. It's just a reflection of what our shareholders wanted.
In April last year Ledzion predicted a cheap 500Gbyte storage disk with read and write speeds of 750Mbit/s could be available by 2004.
I still think holographic data storage will have a future, said Ledzion.
Polight's core technology was the result of five years' research by Professor Stephen Elliott at Cambridge University. Ledzion said opportunities to make use of some interesting patents are being explored.