February 28, 2011 source: DEMO Beat
Claremont Creek Ventures portfolio company EcoATM is one of 53 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2011event taking place this week in Palm Desert, Calif.
EcoATM makes electronics recycling as easy as buying a soda. An extremely high-tech soda.
Today at the DEMO conference in Palm Springs, Calif., the company unveiled special recycling kiosks in which you can deposit your cell phone. Using a patented combination of artificial intelligence, advance machine vision, robotics and electronic diagnostics technology, the machine scans it for damage and compares it to prices in the secondary markets, then makes you an offer for cash or store credit.
Last month, the company announced it had raised $14.4 million from Claremont Creek Ventures and Coinstar, maker of coin-counting kiosks that convert loose change into gift cards.
The company has been conducting field trials for 18 months, which have collected 50,000 phones and paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars via 12 EcoATM prototypes…
Read the full article at: DEMO Beat