Resonant Link, a Burlington-based company that makes wireless charging technology for medical devices and electric vehicles, says it will use a recent $9.3 million round of investment to more than double its workforce from 20 to 50 over the next year.

The company, which moved to Burlington in 2019, is also looking locally for a place to expand its headquarters, said Grayson Zulauf, Resonant Link’s cofounder and CEO. The company will hire engineers and business development staff to work remotely or in the Burlington area.

“We’re looking to help make Burlington one of the centers of power and energy for the next generation of devices and vehicles,” he said.

Just a few years ago, investment in Vermont from out-of-state companies was relatively rare, and most of the money raised by Vermont’s tech companies was limited to sums of around $3 million to $5 million. But the pandemic, and the remote communication that came with it, opened the door to more out-of-state venture capital.

Resonant Link announced February 3 that it had raised $9.3 million from The Engine, a fund that is connected to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.
Resonant Link was founded at Dartmouth College in 2017 and got its start with help from Fresh Tracks, a venture capital firm in Shelburne.

It raised the money from The Engine almost entirely through virtual meetings.

“COVID has really shifted the landscape in a lot of ways where investors are looking,” Zulauf said. “It seems like people have figured out ways to build that trust and build those relationships in a mostly virtual environment.”

Wireless chargers work by using resonant inductive coupling, in which a magnetic field induces electricity to leap from one coil to another nearby one. Medical and cellphone wireless technology has been available for years, but it has been far slower than wired charging, Zulauf said.

Resonant Link is working with a more power-dense, efficient coil design that the company's four founders invented at Dartmouth in 2013. It’s five times faster than wired charging, he said.

Zulauf said he’s confident he can find the staff he needs. He noted that some of the large defense contractors in Chittenden County, including  Dynapower in South Burlington and GlobalFoundries in Essex Junction, have drawn to the area many electrical and mechanical engineers, which his company needs.

Resonant has staff in Massachusetts, California and Switzerland, and plans to expand in all three locations in 2022, the company said.

Zulauf said he’d like the headquarters to stay in Vermont for the foreseeable future.

“I hope people in the Burlington area will be buying electric vehicles with our wireless chargers on them in the next few years,” he said.