The Swedish Industrial Development Fund, SEB Företagsinvest and CR&T Ventures investing in Cobolt AB

The Swedish Industrial Development Fund, SEB Företagsinvest and CR&T Ventures investing in Cobolt AB CR&T Ventures (partly owned by Bure Equity), the Swedish Industrial Development Fund and SEB Företagsinvest are investing a total of SEK 12 million in the laser technology company Cobolt AB. The company aims to become the world's leading supplier of laser systems for the projectors of the future. Cobolt AB is a Stockholm-based company that has developed a system for producing powerful and compact lasers in the visible and infrared wave ranges. One major area of application is in laser display systems, i.e. the successors to today's projectors which are used in meeting rooms, home cinemas and at the cinema. The concept is protected by a number of patents based on research at Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology and the research company Acreo. The funding will be used for further prototype development, building up the organisation and developing the market. "Through this investment, we will have the type of financial partners that are necessary in order to build the company in the long term. The investors are supplying us with experience and expertise, making possible a rapid development of the operation, and this gives us a good opportunity to achieve a strong position in the industry," says Fredrik Laurell, one of the founders of Cobolt AB. "Cobolt's combination of patent-protected conversion crystals, laser design and methods of assembling the lasers makes the company unique. As a result, Cobolt is provided with good protection for its products," maintains Dag Sigurd, Investment Manager at the Swedish Industrial Development Fund. "The focus on laser display systems, i.e. projectors for cinemas, presentations and home cinema, is very exciting. When this is combined with industrial applications such as gas analysis, we can see considerable global market potential for Cobolt," says David Sonnek, Senior Venture Analyst at SEB Företagsinvest. "The investment in Cobolt fits very well with CR&T Ventures' strategy of investing at an early stage in companies using advanced technology. The optics field is extremely interesting at present, and we consider Cobolt to be one of the most attractive companies in Sweden today," says Hans Jacobsson, General Partner at CR&T Ventures. Thanks to an option, the investors have the opportunity to supply the company with an additional SEK 9 million within 9 months. For more information, please contact: Håkan Karlsson, MD and co-founder of Cobolt AB +46 (0)70-850 59 59 Hans Jacobsson, General Partner, CR&T Ventures +46 (0)31-701 42 33 Dag Sigurd, Investment Manager, Swedish Industrial Development Fund +46 (0)8-587 919 00 Jonas Nyman, Venture Analyst, SEB Företagsinvest +46 (0)8-763 79 05 CR&T Ventures is a venture capital company which focuses on investments in the early stages of innovative high-technology companies. The company's first fund has a capital of SEK 100 million, and has Bure Equity as an investor. CR&T is one of the Nordic region's leading incubation companies, and has to date helped launch Spotfire, Appgate, Gatespace and Pilotfish. Bure Equity is the principal owner of CR&T. For more information, please visit www.crtventures.com The Swedish Industrial Development Fund, with an equity of just over SEK 4 billion and investments in around 260 companies, is one of the largest players on the Swedish venture capital market. It provides both various types of loan and equity capital to small and medium-sized companies in most industries. For more information, please visit www.industrifonden.se SEB Företagsinvest is the venture capital unit within SEB. The business concept is to invest venture capital and supply expertise and a broad network of contacts to growth companies within TIME and Life Sciences. Since it was established in the autumn of 1995, SEB Företagsinvest has invested in 38 companies, of which there have been 10 exits, among them Bluetail and Pyrosequencing. For more information, please visit www.foretagsinvest.seb.se ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by BIT http://www.bit.se The following files are available for download: http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2001/02/13/20010213BIT00230/bit0002.doc http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2001/02/13/20010213BIT00230/bit0002.pdf