SUNNYVALE — Sensel, a company developing the next generation of touch-sensing, force-sensing, and haptics technologies, has closed $18.8 million in Series B financing. Sensel has raised over $57 million since it was founded in 2013.
Sensel’s Series B is led by Global Lighting Technologies Inc (GLT), a strategic manufacturing partner to Sensel and leader in custom light-guide modules for computing and other applications. They are joined by Lenovo, who has been a strategic customer to Sensel, and is now an investor as well. These investments will help propel Sensel in developing programmable smart surface solutions that advance industrial design, enable thinner form factors, and elevate user experience for touch-enabled devices.
Following the completion of Sensel’s $28 million Series A in 2020, Sensel achieved two major milestones:
- Shipping haptic touchpads in its first two OEM laptops with the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga and a second major PC manufacturer.
- Rounding out its touch-sensing and force-sensing IP with an equally revolutionary haptics solution.
Since then, Sensel has emerged as a market leader and the only supplier with tight integration of all three technologies necessary for haptic touchpads – touch, force, and haptics. By providing all three components in a single module, Sensel can offer a complete solution, which significantly reduces the cost, time, and burden of integrating those three disparate technologies together.
Lenovo is the first PC company to ship a laptop using Sensel’s technology, and together, Sensel and Lenovo brought one of the first premium haptic touchpads to a PC laptop, with the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga in 2021. “Coming off the success of the touchpad experience in the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga, we are delighted to become investors in Sensel as part of their Series B raise,” said Luis Hernandez, Vice President of Commercial Product Solutions Development, Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo. “This strategic investment will help accelerate our co-development of best-in class haptic touchpads, enhancing the user experience across a wide range of Lenovo’s laptop portfolio in 2022 and beyond.”
“We’re thrilled to welcome Lenovo to our family of investors,” said Sensel CEO and Co-founder Ilya Rosenberg. “Working with Lenovo over the past few years has been an immensely rewarding experience for the Sensel team. We’re proud to be an integral part of the fantastic touchpad in the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga, which I happen to use every day. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with Lenovo to bring the bleeding edge of our smart surface technologies (which combine touch, force, and haptics) to future generations of Lenovo’s wonderful line of laptops.”
The partnership between Sensel and GLT is also highly significant, as it will help Sensel innovate and scale their haptic touchpad solutions to a wider breadth of PC models. “Haptic touchpad backlighting is a natural extension of the technology in our world-leading light guide solutions for keyboards, and we look forward to integrating our technology with Sensel to create beautiful industrial designs for our PC customers,” said Chairman Lee from the GLT Group.
