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Pyreos selected as a 2016 Red Herring Top 100 Europe Winner

Date Announced: 22 Apr 2016

IR sensor firm spun out from Siemens recognized in startup list.

Pyreos, the Edinburgh-based passive infra-red sensor developer, has been selected as a Red Herring Europe award winner at the Top 100 forum, recognising Europe’s leading private companies and celebrating startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries.

Since 1996, technology industry executives, investors, and strategists have valued the Red Herring 100 lists as an instrument for discovering and advocating the most promising private ventures from around the world.  Red Herring selects the Top 100 Europe award winners from approximately 1,200 privately financed companies each year in the European Region.

Pyreos is one of 23 UK companies to feature in the Top 100, following a presentation to the judging panel in Amsterdam during April.  The Edinburgh-headquartered business develops and manufactures sensors that are built into a wide range of devices, from motion sensors for buildings, to milk and oil quality analysers, to scientific instruments in laboratories. 

The company was spun out from Siemens in 2007 and has filed more than 125 patents to protect the intellectual property it has created so far.  Pyreos’ technology is based on the equivalent of 75 man-years and some €10m (£7m) of investment and research at Siemens in ceramic thin-film technology.

Pyreos CEO Andrew Wallace said:  “This is a significant accolade for Pyreos as our technology and our business model has been recognised by some of the world’s most leading technology leaders.

“Pyreos exports 90% of its sales internationally and Europe particularly Germany, is an important market for our products, so this recognition from Red Herring is a valuable step to our business.”

Red Herring’s editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Alibaba, Facebook, Google, Kakao, Skype, SuperCell, Spotify, Twitter, and YouTube would change the way we live and work. Thousands of the companies most interesting and innovative companies have graced the Top 100 list over the years.

“In 2016, selecting the top achievers was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “In fact, we had the toughest time in years because so many entrepreneurs had crossed significant milestones so early. But after much thought, rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across Europe to the Top 100 Winners. We believe Pyreos embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture.  Pyreos should be proud of its accomplishment, as the competition was very strong.”

Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technological innovation, management quality, overall business strategy and market penetration. This assessment was complemented by a review of the track records and standings of similar startups in the same verticals, allowing Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models in Europe.

Pyreos’s major shareholders include Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Scottish Investment Bank (the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise), Seraphim Partners, Siemens Technology Accelerator and Braveheart.  All shareholders contributed to a further £2.5m funding package for the company last year.

The firm is based at the Scottish Microelectronics Centre at the University of Edinburgh and is recruiting for several roles.

Andrew Wallace, a Cambridge graduate in Physics and Engineering, joined the company in February 2015 as its CEO following a career spent in the electronics, sensors and telecoms sectors, including several disruptive product and service launches worldwide.

Source: Pyreos

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