Peratech, a British company that hopes to revolutionize PC gaming with force-sensing and haptic technology, has successfully closed a $31.5 million funding round to accelerate its expansion plans in the gaming industry, allowing it to apply its “novice-to-pro” components to PCs and laptops.
The organization, which has already integrated its proprietary Quantum Tunnelling Composite (QTC) force-sensing technology into over one million devices as diverse as smartphones, cordless drills, and NASA robotics, believes its latest investment will help it make game peripherals more intuitive, engaging, and accessible, giving competitive players the tools they need to improve their performance with greater efficiency and speed.
The company, based in the U.K.’s Catterick Garrison–the British Army’s equivalent of Fort Bragg–was boosted by a second round of finance led by Dark Matter Partners and supported by Aon. It follows an initial funding round for its advanced user interface solutions for consumer electronics; this $12.4 million finance deal attracted support from Merck Ventures and Arie Capital back in 2017.
Peratech’s force-sensing keyboard and trackpad technology, in conjunction with its AI-based Hydra user interface software, offer an alternative approach to gaming by adapting key functions based on pressure, much like analog features on controllers. For example, pressing a single key harder could change your character’s movement from a stroll to a sprint, eliminating the need for multiple key combinations like W and Shift. Similarly, in FPS games, one key can be used to equip a sniper rifle and zoom in, making gameplay more intuitive and streamlined.
“Our force sensing and haptic feedback technologies not only make industry-leading haptic trackpads and force-enabled keyboards, but our control firmware and software does something that no other user interface product can: it makes the user interfaces intelligent,” said Peratech CEO Jon Stark. “We use that intelligence to make PCs fundamentally easier, more engaging, and more fun to use for every user type, from novices to professional content creators and gamers.”
Peratech also believes it can have a wider impact with its technologies, due to its mass-producible nature; Stark hopes to expand the company’s partnerships with producers of cars, industrial controls, and medical devices.
Scott Bell, joint managing partner at Dark Matter Partners, added: “Peratech has built a unique platform technology, with extremely strong IP foundations. They have proven commercial traction globally in large addressable markets. We believe in the management team and are excited to support their ambitions to scale up.”
