InPhase Filed for Chapter XI

InPhase Technologies, Inc., in holographic digital storage, has filed for Chapter 11 with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the District of Colorado.

The company is seeking to restructure by the end of 2011 as it deals with existing creditors.

Signal Lake Management LLC, an investor in next-generation technology and computer communications companies which acquired the majority stake in InPhase in March, 2010, has been seeking the best possible route for rebuilding the company, and agreed with its partners that Chapter 11 was the most expeditious means of achieving that goal.

"We have sought various ways of re-starting InPhase that would be in the best interest of our stakeholders – including shareholders, creditors, customers, strategic partners and suppliers – and we believe that this restructuring will be the most effective resolution. Our intent is to provide the court with a very achievable business plan, which will treat everyone fairly in the process," said Bart Stuck, managing director of Signal Lake. "We are dealing with very valuable intellectual property and assets. We need to be very careful to do this right. When the re-structuring of InPhase is complete, the company can finally move forward on the plan that it formulated last year, and deliver the industry’s first commercial holographic digital storage products."

InPhase owns the largest trove of patents related to holographic digital storage, and has more accumulated know-how than any other company in this field. Signal Lake was the founding lead investor in InPhase, which it helped spin out of Bell Laboratories in conjunction with the then-Lucent New Ventures Group in December, 2000. The company had raised more than $100 million in capital over five rounds of funding, and had produced the world’s first working prototype holographic storage system, dubbed Tapestry, in addition to winning numerous industry accolades and awards.

InPhase is led by CEO Art Rancis and senior vice president of engineering James Russo. InPhase lists initial customers including Turner Broadcasting

Comments

Based in Longmont, Colorado, InPhase was founded in 2000. It was a Lucent Technologies venture, spun out of Bell Labs research.

The company got around $105 million in financial funding, early investors including storage companies like Imation, Hitachi Maxell, Alps, Nanotech/Mitsubishi that will loose all their money.

Signal Lake and Acacia acquired a majority stake of InPhase in March 2010 for $10 million.

The old start-up has now nothing to sell but patents - some of them also signed by Hitachi.

But which company is going to re-invest in sophisticated holographic media and drives that InPhase was unable to put on the market after eleven years and that was the last relatively big and serious firm in this field.

Holography, on which engineers are working for since decades, has few chances, if any, to be the archiving media technology of the future.

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