Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.
I’m James Cannings, the Executive Chairman of QPT. QPT is a power electronics start-up with a vision to reduce global electricity consumption by 5%, saving billions and moving the needle on the Net Zero challenge. Electric motors use up to 50% of the world’s electricity and our innovations allow these motors up to be driven up to 10% more efficiently.

Most electric motors are driven by power electronics using silicon-based transistors but these have a limit to how fast they can be switched and drive the motors with a low-frequency PWM signal that causes further losses in the motor. QPT enables the development of high-frequency (1MHz) Gallium Nitride (GaN)-based motor drives with an integrated, very low loss, sine wave filter. This means a motor drive that is up to 20x smaller, reducing up to 80% of the losses and driving the electric motor with a smooth sine wave, further increasing motor efficiency, reducing noise, vibration and harshness and significantly reducing system costs.

What was the most exciting high point of 2024 for your company?

In 2024, we announced the development of the world’s first 1MHz GaN-based 7.5KW motor drive with our lead customer ABB, one of the world’s largest suppliers of industrial electric motors. Since the motor drives market has effectively plateaued in terms of the underlying efficiency of the silicon-based drives for over a decade (with some progress being made with silicon carbide in the EV market) this project generated a huge influx of interest in the business.

As a small start-up, we have been directly approached by almost all of the major global motor and drive companies, a number of the major automotive companies, as well as several tier 1 suppliers of EV drivetrains. Interest from the automotive sector increased further when we won the Innovate UK ARMD3 grant to develop a GaN-based 75KW inverter for Cenex 2025.

What was the biggest challenge your company faced in 2024?

As a deep tech hardware company solving very complex challenges (this is our 5^th year of R & D) funding is an ongoing challenge, especially whilst VCs and other investors are drawn to AI-based investments which can offer faster time-to-market and potential exits. As we are initially targeting industrial markets, investors understand that these are sectors that can take a long time to deliver products to market.

How is your company’s work addressing this biggest challenge?

The work with ABB helped to reposition the company as having overcome the major R & D challenges that come with hard-switching GaN transistors at 1ns, coping with the thermal and EM challenges which are so critical to solve at high-frequency, which is the only viable route to small, efficient, sine wave motor drives. As well as demonstrating that we were into a more traditional engineering phase for the business, filing key patents (like qAttach) also allowed us to start licensing discussions with key partners. This has the double benefit of showing ABB (and other potential motor drive companies) that there is a commercial route to market for them with our IP, but also shows investors that there are faster routes to revenue for the business. qAttach, for example, has benefits for existing packaged GaN devices, beyond just the motor drives application.

What do you think the biggest growth area for 2025 will be, and why?

Once the data is released from the ABB project in Q1 2025, the question is how many other engagements and evaluations QPT can actually cope with, at the same time helping customers like ABB take the next-generation of GaN-based motor drives to market. The ABB project has created huge interest given the huge potential of GaN to significantly disrupt the motor drives market.

We already have the Innovate UK project to develop the 75KW EV demonstrator and we have a long line of companies wanting to engage. It would certainly be easy for a start-up to be stretched too thin! We are also now able to start licensing and partnership deals in order to help scale the building blocks of our IP. There is a lot of interest in this area too and we’ll need to pick our engagements wisely.

How is your company’s work addressing this growth?

For 2025 it will simply be a case of picking our strategic partners carefully and staying very focussed on our mission to avoid over committing. We expect significant funding opportunities to unlock once the ABB project is complete and the benefits can be fully quantified. A more significant series A funding round in 2025 will help us to scale to meet the demands of the interested parties.

What conferences did you attend in 2024 and how was the traffic?

In 2024 QPT attended:

• Hello Tomorrow (Paris)
• CS International (Brussels)
• Power Electronics International (Brussels)
• PCIM (Nuremburg)
• ISES EU Power Summit (Porto)
• The Centre for Power Electronics Conference (CPE)
• ISES US Power Summit (North Carolina)

I would probably have to pick PCIM as a highlight where we were invited to display on the Infineon stand as one of their key partners (we use Infineon GaN transistors in our solution). We were absolutely swamped on our stand for three days solid as people wanted to learn more about our 1MHz motor drive.

Will you attend conferences in 2025? Same or more?

Yes, most of the conferences listed above we’ll look to attend in 2025. We also plan to attend the Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta in March 2025. We’ll be on the Infineon stand if anyone wants to swing by and learn more.

How do customers engage with your company?

Potential customer and partners are welcome to email me directly (james@q-p-t.com). 2025 isn’t going to be a case of ramping up with hundreds of customers. But it’s going to be a very exciting year as, after over 5 years of R & D to solve the complex problems, we finally get to show the world the benefits of unleashing GaN to its full potential. Only high-frequency GaN can enable high efficiency motor drives with best-in-class power density and integrated sine wave filters to provide huge benefits to the motor. It’s an exciting time to be part of a truly transformative moment in power electronics.

Additional questions or final comments?

I don’t think so! Thanks for reading. If you’re involved in electric motor driven systems, please do get in touch!

Also Read:

2025 Outlook with Dr Josep Montanyà of Nanusens

CEO Interview: John Chang of Jmem Technology Co., Ltd.

CEO Interview: Dr. Zeynep Bayram of 35ELEMENTS

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