Former NASA Researcher’s Quantum Energy Chip Startup Secures $12M in Seed Funding
Casimir, a startup founded by former NASA propulsion researcher Harold “Sonny” White, closed a $12 million seed round to commercialize a semiconductor chip that harvests energy from quantum vacuum fields. The round, led by Scout Ventures, blew past its original $8 million target. If the technology works at scale, it could eliminate batteries from billions of ultra-low-power devices by the end of the decade.
Startup Targets Battery-Free Devices
The company’s first product, the MicroSparc chip, is a 5mm x 5mm piece of silicon designed to produce 1.5 volts at 25 microamps. This output could be compared to a small rechargeable battery, but Casimir claims the chip doesn’t degrade and never needs replacement. The company is targeting commercial availability in 2028, according to a statement published May 12.
Scout Ventures, Lavrock Ventures, Cottonwood Technology, Capital Factory, American Deep Tech, and Draper Associates all participated in the round. Tim Draper, an early backer of Tesla and SpaceX, joined as an individual investor.
The immediate market Casimir is going after includes tire pressure monitors, embedded sensors, and wearables, devices for which swapping or charging batteries is expensive or simply impractical. The company pegs that segment at nearly $10 billion. Its longer-term roadmap includes consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and building-scale energy systems, though those applications remain years away and unproven.
Quantum Vacuum Energy Faces Commercial Test
Casimir’s technology grew out of White’s work at the Limitless Space Institute, a nonprofit focused on interstellar travel founded by Kam Ghaffarian, who also co-founded Intuitive Machines and X-energy. Ghaffarian remains an investor and board member. White published a peer-reviewed paper in Physical Review Research in March 2026 laying out the theoretical basis for extracting usable electrical energy from engineered Casimir cavities.
The science behind the company draws on a century of quantum physics research into the Casimir effect, the measurable force between two closely spaced surfaces caused by fluctuations in the quantum vacuum. Turning that force into a practical, continuous power source is something no one has ever done commercially. DARPA-funded nanofabrication research and university partnerships have supported parts of the underlying work, but the jump from laboratory demonstration to a shipping product will be the real test. Casimir has about two years to prove it can make that jump.