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183. Bull, Bear & Beyond – Noctiluca: executive interview
6 Plays7 hours ago
In this interview, Mateusz Nowak, Noctiluca’s CCO and board member, outlines how the company has evolved from a single‑material proposition into an OLED material platform developer, synthesising and scaling families of emitter and functional materials. Noctiluca now has c 1,200 compounds, 10 patent families and strong relationships across the display industry. Mateusz discusses the industry’s ‘race for blue’ and explains how the company’s electron injection layer materials provide a new route to improving blue pixel efficiency, with internal gains up to 15x and more than twofold industry‑validated improvements, including a 100–150% uplift in partner trials. Mateusz also highlights the rapid commercial progress in Asia, driven by local presence and collaboration, with engagements now spanning more than 15 global entities across the OLED value chain. Finally, he outlines Noctiluca’s intellectual property‑led strategy, expanding its patent platform towards 12 families and entering national phases across up to 40 jurisdictions.
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Transcript
Introducing Noctoluka and Mateusz Nowak
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Edison TV. Today I'm joined by Mateusz Nowak, Chief Commercial Officer and Board Member at Noctoluka. Noctoluka is a Polish business. It specializes in developing materials for the OLED market, so OLED displays, photovoltaics and so
Noctoluka's Evolution in the OLED Market
00:00:23
Speaker
on. And the company has recently seen a significant surge in activity and interest in its materials.
00:00:29
Speaker
Mateusz, many thanks for joining me today. Hello and thank you for having me. and It's a true pleasure. Great. And can you start by introducing the company for for our audience? you What does Noctiluka do and what makes your approach to OLED materials development distinctive within your market? Certainly. Noctiluka is a deep tech materials company from Torun, Poland.
00:00:53
Speaker
We are focused on materials, on chemicals that are used in the photonics market. Our first, the most important market is the OLED market.
00:01:04
Speaker
And you can see OLED devices in many applications. And we produce and design advanced emitters and functional materials, ah such as our proprietary electron injection layer materials or electron transport layer materials.
00:01:22
Speaker
Today, we have a portfolio of around 1,200 compounds that are covered by 10 patent applications. We run labs in Toruń and Sełł.
00:01:35
Speaker
and collaborate with leading technological institutes and teams across the world. We say that we already have relationships with most of the market.
Challenges and Innovations in Blue Pixel Technology
00:01:46
Speaker
We say eight out of 10 display players because we cannot say that with everyone. That would infringe our NDAs. um And...
00:01:55
Speaker
so So basically, ah we we we we have been quite successful in in getting the attention of the display market. And what makes us, I would say, unique or distincts us from from the rest of the materials, material developers, is We have evolved from a company that's promising just one material, one millimeter, into basically a platform designer when we synthesize, scale, complete families of materials and work with the with the industry to build
00:02:33
Speaker
engineer a complete solution. ah So we are not just designing molecules. We're designing the the performance world map for future displays with tier one players. Thank you. That's very helpful. And can you talk about the, ah guess, the specific problems or problem that you solve. In particular, there are a lot of challenges around blue light within the OLED industry.
00:02:58
Speaker
ah Why has that problem proven so difficult to solve and and and what does Noctoluka do to address that bottleneck? As you've rightfully mentioned, the the biggest bottleneck in OLED industry is the blue pixel.
00:03:14
Speaker
Achieving very high brightness and lifetime without sacrificing efficiency or color purity. It's called like a holy grail of the industry. This is why we say in the industry that there is a race for blue ah and and in terms of what's the what's the central R&D theme of for the industry. Many of the companies, us included, we have entered this race for blue with emitters, with the the chemical compounds. When you apply electricity to them, they emit light. But we have also evolved, as ahve as I mentioned in in the previous answer, um into a company that...
00:03:55
Speaker
re-engineers materials on other layers of the ODD devices, in the functional layers. And we asked ourselves if we can solve that challenge in other place than just emission layer. And while we started looking for other solutions or parallel solutions to the emitters, we have designed a proprietary electron injection material.
00:04:18
Speaker
And this It's a complete, I would say, a completely different approach from other material developers with a focus on the technology. We've always been focused on customer pain points and what they want to actually do with the technology. What's the ultimate goal here? We've been able to increase the the efficiency of a blue pixel up to 15 times.
Engagements with Asian OEMs and Market Impact
00:04:47
Speaker
And it's ah it's something that the industry hasn't seen in a long time. um But of course, you might say that 15 times of improvement is just a fairy tale for ah for scientists and scientists and in the past has have very often...
00:05:06
Speaker
overinflated their, what is ah achievable with their technology. So again, with with the market in mind, we've we've entered into as sparring match, I would say, with the industry, where we actually went in there, started to test our material very rigorously with the industry and in the industry settings, in exactly the same structures that our phones are operating in. And there's the same setups that um Asian manufacturers and manufacturing our display devices at scale, we've been able to to show that our materials improve the efficiency of a blue pixel two times.
00:05:50
Speaker
Not 15 times. Reality is ah harsher, I would say, but at least it's proven. It's ah it's a very meaningful milestone. Usually when we test other or our competitors test other materials, they get improvement of 5%, 10%, 15%. We're talking about in the case of one of our partners from China, the improvement of over 100% in the application for smartphones or in case of one of our Taiwanese partners in the passive matrix solid business, over 150% of increase. again, these are
00:06:29
Speaker
again these are I call them like a product defining on the meaningful changes. Something that you can actually re-engineer the entire device around.
00:06:42
Speaker
um Before our devices were bright enough and you couldn't use them outside, smartwatches were no-go. Today, ah the materials are good enough for the operation in in sun conditions, and full sun conditions. But When we go further, we all want our phone to be charged, not every day, but every two or three days at least, or at least our phones to be so thinner and operating longer on the same charge.
Project Portfolio and Global Partnerships
00:07:14
Speaker
And you've recently seen recently seen quite a significant surge in the number of customer engagements you've got, particularly with Chinese OEMs, Chinese players.
00:07:25
Speaker
Can you talk about what's driving that? It's a result of of two years of very deliberate groundwork that we did in Asia. um We've combined three elements, I would say. Of course, the first thing is the compelling technology hook. this growth of or the solution for the blue pixel problem, race for blue. And it seems like our electron injection layer family materials solves a very real
00:07:57
Speaker
problem that our partners have been battling with for over a decade or even two in some cases. Second element of that was the local presence and speed. um We've set up a sales ah team, a sales office in Taiwan, ah hired local account manager, partnered up with local research institutions, and that allowed us to not only break the cultural and language barrier,
00:08:25
Speaker
and but ultimately arrive at very short feedback cycles with the industry. Our material, electron injection material, is tested by, i think, over 15 entities right now globally.
00:08:41
Speaker
um That basically capture 99.9% of the value of the market. yeah And that pipeline, it balances... um So very large transformational potential opportunities and then and then smaller ones and smaller all more near term ones. Can you talk through the profile of that? So for the transformational projects, we're talking about, for example, our joint development project with a Chinese giant.
00:09:08
Speaker
that's built a multi-billion ah OLED facility or OLED fabrication facility. um Another one is our MTA and pilot sales to the world largest telecom equipment vendor from China.
00:09:24
Speaker
we're We're, of course, talking here about the Koreans, but also but about the Japanese or U.S. consumer brands that are not manufacturers of the displays, but are huge brands that influence their value chain.
00:09:40
Speaker
And on the other side, with the shorter ah cycle projects, the smaller accounts, We have um companies that we've worked in, for example, chemical contract research organization type of projects with spin-offs from MIT.
00:09:58
Speaker
ah We have a very good connection and manufacturing agreements with German a partner in Uru. We have orders from companies that deal with document securitization in Europe and need some specific chemicals for that.
00:10:17
Speaker
um or organic photovoltaics manufacturers from Europe. So again, here it's a huge account and in the first pillar, transformational for for the business.
00:10:28
Speaker
And the second is cash generating um projects that enable us to grow as a company and also build up the revenue that's needed to to sustain these transformational
Intellectual Property and Future Plans
00:10:43
Speaker
projects. Can we talk about intellectual property?
00:10:45
Speaker
IP is hugely important in this industry industry for protecting your technology, for monetizing your technology. We've also seen in the industry quite a number of acquisitions of businesses at a pre-revenue stage, really, for their IP. Can you discuss your IP position and and also your approach to protecting it? IP is absolutely the core of our business. It's ah it's something that...
00:11:12
Speaker
is a major value driver for for our cost kind and company. And by the end of third quarter, 2025, we had 10 patent families in our portfolio.
00:11:28
Speaker
Hopefully by the end of 2025, we'll be able to share that it's 12 patent families. So we're planning to to patent even more. And...
00:11:40
Speaker
Many of those patent applications have been already granted and began entering into national phases in as many as up to 40 jurisdictions globally.
00:11:51
Speaker
And of course, as you've mentioned, um IP in this part of the technology ah spectrum is very transactional. ah We are following the our peers like Novalet or Synora, who ultimately created value for their IP platforms.
00:12:10
Speaker
And similarly, we are building this transactionable IP asset um while keeping the optionality to remain independent cash generating materials business.
00:12:24
Speaker
So, um yeah, I would say that IP is at our core. No no question about it. ah We run seminars on IP protection basically on week one of everyone who is joining our Noctilucas team.
00:12:41
Speaker
We have actually our own team of ah IP specialists internally who are also PhDs in organic chemistry. So very ah unique, i would say, blend of skills and then very focused on on keeping that protected. Get you.
00:12:58
Speaker
Matthias, fascinating business, really interesting speaking to you. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you very much. And I hope to really transform the market. And with partners like you, I believe we can reach out to international investor base and grow even further.