dorsaVi, a Melbourne wearable sensor company best known for tracking how injured patients, elite athletes and factory workers move, has raised $3 million to push into humanoid robotics, defence and computer chips.
The company said it had received firm commitments for a placement of 136,363,636 new shares at 2.2 cents each. The buyers were new and existing sophisticated, professional, and high-net-worth investors.
The issue price is a 12 per cent discount to the last traded price of 2.5 cents on 1 October. It is also 15 per cent below the 10-day volume-weighted average price of 2.6 cents and 8 per cent below the 15-day average of 2.4 cents. Investors will receive one free unlisted option for every two shares, a total of 68,181,818 options. Each option can be exercised at 4.5 cents and expires three years after issue.
The board said talks with prospective robotics and defence partners have convinced it that the sensor business is worth more than its established clinical, sport and workplace markets suggest. In its view, the company's real asset is its library of high-fidelity, clinical-grade human movement data. Developers of humanoid robots and autonomous systems are finding that kind of data increasingly scarce.
The company now describes itself as having three connected businesses. The first covers sensors and movement data, built on FDA-cleared and TGA-certified sensors used for more than a decade. Sensor v6.5 launched last quarter. The second is an intelligence layer based on neuromorphic intellectual property licensed from Technion. The third is a semiconductor program run with NTU and ITRI that aims to put low-power intelligence directly on devices.
That chip work has passed a milestone. The first RRAM CMOS validation chip has completed front-end and middle-of-line fabrication on TSMC's process. The wafers are now going through proprietary RRAM integration and energy testing, which will produce data to guide the company towards future 22 nanometre development.
Chairman Gernot Abl said the company had changed character over the past year. "Over the past year dorsaVi has laid the foundations of a Physical AI company," he said. "We have secured exclusive RRAM and robotics IP from NTU Singapore and neuromorphic IP from Technion, launched Sensor v6.5, and our first RRAM-CMOS chip is now in fabrication at TSMC."
"Our conversations with robotics and defence partners keep returning to the same point," he said. He described that point as "a decade of clinical-grade human movement data, and the ability to capture more of it on demand, is a scarce asset."
"This funding lets us act on that. We will expand our movement data and capture capability for humanoid robotics developers, and push our silicon program towards low-power, on-device intelligence. Our focus now is converting these discussions into evaluations and commercial outcomes."
The company said most of the money will go toward growing the movement data library and its ability to capture custom data using wearable sensors and video AI. Humanoid robot developers want this data for balance, coordination and recovery. Funds will also support exploratory work on smart soldier systems, aerial drones and autonomous underwater vehicles, along with the neuromorphic and RRAM programs.
