Shamrock Invests $9 Million in Liquid-solids Metals Startup AMT

Advanced Metal Technology, which belongs to IDB (TASE: IDBH) group company Elron (TASE, Nasdaq: ELRN), announced today that it has wrapped up $14 million in financing, including from the Israeli branch of the Disney family's private equity fund Shamrock.

Elron itself invested another $5 million, lifting its stake in AMT to 34 percent, and the rest came from Shamrock.

In mid-2004 Elron invested $3 million in AMT, half the amount it was raising at the time.

AMT develops, produces and markets amorphous and nanocrystalline metals for a range of applications. Its products are new materials created by mixing metals, heating them to temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Celsius, and then cooling them at superfast speed of up to a million degrees a second.

The result of this thermal shock is a material with the molecular properties of liquid.

Amorphous metal has characteristics of a liquid, but it's actually a solid. It has greater electricity conductivity, explains a source at Elron: It has super-magnetic, electrical, mechanical and chemical properties.

The technology had been developed by Russian scientists, who were seeking to make special materials for the defense industry, and for civilian applications as well.

AMT has four subsidiaries, each of which is developing different uses for its metal products, which take the form of amorphous metal ribbons, wires and powders.

In the first quarter of 2006 Elron lost $3.5 million, compared with losing $5 million in the same period of 2005. For the year 2005 it netted $47.3 million, based on exits from portfolio companies.