TechGROWTH Ohio leads $1.3 million investment in Global Cooling

October 12, 2009

TechGROWTH Ohio today announced an investment of $1.3 million in Athens-based Global Cooling, Inc., a company that develops innovative, high-performance, energy-efficient cooling products for customers in scientific, medical and electronics fields. TechGROWTH Ohio is an Entrepreneurial Signature Program (ESP) funded by the Ohio Department of Development’s Third Frontier initiative to serve southeast Ohio.

The East Central Ohio Tech Angel Fund (ECOTAF) and five individual “angel” investors (two American and three international) joined TechGROWTH Ohio in the financing.

Neill Lane, who served the company initially as a TechGROWTH Ohio Entrepreneur-in-Residence, became Global Cooling’s President earlier this year. He said, “We’re grateful for the support and assistance of TechGROWTH Ohio, ECOTAF and our individual investors. We were once a small group of inventors. Now, we plan to grow to about 100 employees, all based out of our Athens facility.”

Global Cooling will use the new capital to accelerate development and market introduction of several products, including the world’s first portable ultra-low temperature freezer (-80°C, -112°F). Global Cooling’s freezer technology weighs less than a third of the nearest competition and consumes less than a quarter of the power.

Paul Benedict, who will represent TechGROWTH Ohio on Global Cooling’s Board of Directors, said, “As we talked to investors about participating in Global Cooling, excitement for the company’s products and team kept growing. Ultimately, we rose more than twice as much money as we thought we could. In this economy, that is extraordinary.”

Chris Gerig, an executive board member of ECOTAF, added, “Our group is very pleased to have the chance to partner with TechGROWTH Ohio to help fund and promote a local business with a great leadership team and tremendous potential."

Global Cooling is TechGROWTH Ohio’s third investment. Its first, Toobla, is a website for collecting, saving and sharing favorite content from the Internet with visual bookmarks. Its second, Ghostblind, is a developer and manufacturer of a patent-pending adaptive camouflage technology that hides hunters, photographers, and soldiers in virtually any environment.

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