Canada Economic Development
Jun 18, 2024
December 2023. Francis Roy smiles. Along with his colleagues at Quaze, he is preparing to sign the last holiday greeting card from their start-up. The hundredth. With satisfaction, he recalls the same time the year before: A single greeting card was mailed out.
In just a few months, the Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu start-up made its mark on a market it did not expect to break into right away: The defence sector. It was without expectation or any specific target that the Quaze team, equipped with its wireless charging technology, went to DEFSEC (also know as the Canadian Defence Security and Aerospace Exhibition Atlantic) in Fall 2022—a major trade show for the aerospace, defence and security industries held every year in Halifax. Quaze was part of a delegation of businesses supported by Investissement Québec International and Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions (CED).
Impressed by the potential of Quaze’s technology and the professionalism of its leaders, CED’s Industrial and Technological Benefits (ITB) team would accompany the business through its first steps into the defence ecosystem and facilitate meetings with major prime contractors in the industry. How? By providing individualized guidance to Quaze for its trade missions to major events and shows such as DEFSEC, CANSEC (the largest trade show in Canada in the areas of security, defence and new technologies), and Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) by the Association of the United States Army (AUSA), and by putting the team into contact with prime contractors based on targets set together ahead of time.
“Without the ITB team’s support, expertise, and industrial knowledge, we would never have been so efficient… It would have been much more difficult to navigate our way in,” confides Francis Roy, President and Chief Strategy Officer. “The main thing we learned from their in-depth understanding of the sector and its players was a bit like The Defence Industry for Dummies, and this is what contributed to our success from one show to another.”
Autonomous robotics
Although Quaze does not define itself as a defence sector business, its technology makes it possible to resolve one of the sector’s major problems: Making autonomous robotics truly autonomous. “An autonomous robot can only be autonomous if it can charge itself...autonomously, right?” jokes Francis Roy. “What happens when the machine’s battery dies? You have to find another way to charge or fuel a robot from any manufacturer, in any environment.” This is precisely the issue the Quaze team proposes to resolve.
The technology it has developed makes it possible to transmit energy without precise alignment, regardless of the context, and to charge several electronic or robotic devices simultaneously. “For example, all the devices we could place on a worktable with a powered surface would be charged. If we sent 200 watts to the surface, we could charge one doodad at 200 watts or 200 doodads at 1 watt,” he adds. It all works thanks to their “secret sauce” of magnetic resonance. “There are four components to the system: An emitter that pushes out energy, a surface that spreads it out, a receiving antenna on the charging device, and software that makes the whole thing sing,” specifies the entrepreneur. The particular nature of the system: Very little energy or power is lost on the charging surface. Quaze offers uniform access to energy, regardless of where the surface is located.
Ambition: Superstar
Francis Roy and his team think big: “With this technology, we want to position ourselves as a universal service station that makes it possible to fuel any robot at any time in any situation,” he illustrates. “Even if there is three inches of snow, the energy transfer can take place; even if the surface is underwater and a swimming robot moves close to it, the power transfer nonetheless occurs. Vehicles can even be charged in locations as hostile as on the moon or in space!”
Quaze wants to become THE wireless energy reference, and this represents a huge potential market. The team’s innovative technology is already generating great interest among major players in the defence industry, and its possible applications are infinite: It could be used anywhere where a device or mobile equipment requires wireless charging.
The choice to set out and conquer the defence industry was not a trivial one for Quaze. With their small team, the leaders of this start-up considered this ecosystem to be the most promising one, even in times of economic uncertainty. However, it is quite possible that the technology developed by the team will make its way into the industrial, mining and even civilian sectors. But all in good time.
Francis Roy is patient: For him, doing business or finalizing a contract is a long-term process. “It is becoming increasingly easier, from one conversation to the next, to know what to say, what to expect, who plays what role, who is important, who has influence; we are beginning to understand the particular nature of the industry and its subtleties. I see this as an investment!”.
Even if a series of meetings with a potential partner does not immediately lead to a contract, the idea of a collaboration will have nonetheless been planted in the mind of this partner—and could germinate in other circumstances. As a bonus, the journey will have enabled Quaze to understand even more the dynamics of the defence market and to hone its approach moving forward. And while it waits for its technology to shine as brightly in the universe as the quasars that inspired its name, the Quaze team is ready to increase the number of holiday wishes for 2024.
To see the original aticle on the CED website: