Intelline

Origins

Chris and I (Kyle) have known each-other since elementary school. In high school we built an electric car together with a small team of students, and we both went on to study at the University of Waterloo. Chris went into math & accounting, I went into mechanical engineering. The first spark of an idea came in 2017, with EV adoption on the rise. I’ve always been fascinated by all things complicated, difficult, and physical, and naturally was drawn to the energy and automotive space. There is beauty in the things that power our world in the background, unnoticed, unglamorous, but essential. I was drawn to the problem not so much in the spotlight, aging and ever strained grid infrastructure. The constant need for more efficient hardware with practical implementation. Through a rabbit hole of research I was fascinated with the potential of superconducting technologies, saw the barrier in the high cost of cryocooling, and had an idea for more cost effective cryocoolers. I went to my trusted friend Chris with the idea, and Intelline was born. People ask about the name, its a word we made up from latin, ‘intelligent in nature’. Fast forward to 2019, we had a lovely multi-layered pulse tube cryocooler prototype designed and fabricated from scratch, along with our own linear helium compressor to power it. Unfortunately there wasn’t a huge market for it and we would have to move mountains as a tiny startup to bring together all the stakeholders for any meaningfully sized superconductor project. Over the holidays at the end of that year, we came across an article on diesel generators, highlighting their terrible inefficiency, yet they remain the only effective option for heavy duty industrial power. We were sitting beside our compressor prototype and that was the lightbulb - “Hey, this compressor design would make a really great engine”. I was always a huge car nerd, and have been sketching designs for engines and car parts since high-school, so the prospect of contributing a game-changing engine to the world was very exciting. We modified the compressor design with piston-mounted valves and added on the necessary combustion hardware, filed the patents, quickly machined a small cross-sectioned prototype, and carted it off to a mining equipment conference in Toronto where it was an instant hit. Customers were so excited even at that stage, and it was clear to us we were building something that customers have been begging for with no one answering the call. Today, we have a real running prototype of our groundbreaking engine design, and are preparing for first customer deliveries at a time when this technology is critical for growing power demand. We’ve come a long way, it’s difficult and painful, but since day 1 I’ve had the same fascination with unnoticed, unglamorous, essential hardware, and I’m eternally grateful to have the chance to contribute to that world of important energy hardware. I don’t think I ever decided to be a founder. My path is more driven by a need to do something, and a company is just the vehicle to bring vision into reality.