Insider Brief
- Casimir raised $12 million in an oversubscribed seed round to commercialize semiconductor chips designed to harvest energy from quantum vacuum fields for battery-free electronics.
- The company said its first-generation MicroSparc chip targets ultra-low-power devices such as sensors, wearables, and monitoring systems, with commercial availability planned by 2028.
- Casimir’s technology emerged from research led by former NASA propulsion researcher Harold “Sonny” White and was incubated at the Limitless Space Institute with backing from investors including Scout Ventures and Tim Draper.
PRESS RELEASE — Casimir, Inc., a quantum energy technology company founded by former NASA advanced propulsion researcher Dr. Harold “Sonny” White, today announced the close of a $12 million seed round led by Scout Ventures. The funding will commercialize the world’s first quantum vacuum energy source: semiconductor chips that harvest energy from quantum vacuum fields to produce continuous electrical power with no batteries, cords, or charging required.
The oversubscribed round exceeded its original $8 million target, reflecting strong investor confidence in Casimir’s solution to one of energy technology’s longest-standing challenges, harnessing the Casimir effect. Scout Ventures is joined by Lavrock Ventures, Cottonwood Technology, Capital Factory, American Deep Tech, and Tim Draper of Draper Associates. The funding will accelerate chip performance optimization, targeting commercial availability of the company’s first-generation MicroSparc chip by 2028, positioning Casimir to disrupt the ultra-low-power electronics sector.
Casimir’s MicroSparc chip measures just 5mm × 5mm and is designed to produce 1.5 volts at 25 microamps, performance comparable to a small rechargeable battery, but with no degradation and no replacement cycle. The company’s initial market targets ultra-low-power electronics, including tire pressure monitoring systems, embedded sensors, wearables, and other devices where battery replacement is costly or impractical, a market valued at nearly $10 billion today.
Casimir’s technology is engineered to scale across the full power spectrum. Beyond its initial IoT applications, the company’s roadmap extends into consumer electronics and mobility platforms, including electric vehicles, and ultimately into larger-scale energy systems capable of powering homes and commercial infrastructure, a total addressable market exceeding $67 billion. As artificial intelligence drives unprecedented demand for persistent, low-latency computing, Casimir’s battery-free architecture offers new possibilities for always-on memory, edge devices, and autonomous systems at every scale.
“Millions of devices will operate for years without a battery ever needing to be replaced or recharged because we have engineered a customized Casimir cavity into hardware capable of producing persistent electrical power,” said Dr. Harold “Sonny” White, Founder and CEO of Casimir. “I spent nearly two decades at NASA studying how we power humanity’s future. That work led me to the Casimir effect and the quantum vacuum, where new tools have allowed us to build on a century of scientific knowledge and bring abundant power to the world.”
Casimir’s technology was incubated at the Limitless Space Institute (LSI), a nonprofit advancing interstellar travel founded by Dr. Kam Ghaffarian, the technology investor and serial entrepreneur behind X-energy, Intuitive Machines, Axiom Space, and Quantum Space. Dr. White serves as LSI’s Director of Advanced Research and Development, the role from which Casimir’s technology emerged. Dr. Ghaffarian continues to serve as an investor and board member of Casimir.
“Casimir represents exactly the kind of breakthrough dual-use technology Scout Ventures was built to back,” said Brad Harrison, Founder and Managing Partner at Scout Ventures. “This is based on 100 years of science and we’re finally approaching a commercial product. Sonny’s ability to pull pieces from different domains of research and engineer them together into working hardware is remarkable. We’re proud to lead this round and support Casimir’s journey from applied science to deployed technology.”
Casimir’s scientific foundation has been supported by multiple research and development efforts, including DARPA-funded nanofabrication research, university partnerships, and Dr. White’s peer-reviewed work on the dynamic quantum vacuum. On March 9, 2026, Dr. White published “Emergent Quantization from a Dynamic Vacuum” in Physical Review Research (DOI: 10.1103/l8y7-r3rm), providing the
theoretical foundation for why engineered Casimir cavities produce usable electrical energy and marking the latest milestone in his nearly two decades of advanced propulsion research at NASA.
Casimir is proudly American-made, actively engaged with commercial, university, and government partners for dual-use applications with direct implications for U.S. energy independence and national security.
To learn more about Casimir, visit casimir-inc.com
