SAN JOSE, CA – Today, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) announced a new federal grant was awarded to South Bay Area video compression startup NGCodec Inc.

The $750,000 grant, awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, will support NGCodec’s video encoder project, a hardware field programmable gate-array (FGPA) implementation of H.265/HEVC low latency encoder algorithms for next-generation video compression.

“With the lion’s share of online data consumed by video, next-generation video compression is vital to future internet innovations,” said Lofgren. “Applying better compression and reducing the amount of data needed for video promises huge improvements in the quality, cost and experience of streaming video online. The practical applications of quality, low cost video streaming are limitless. I look forward to hearing more encouraging news from the promising entrepreneurs at NGCodec.”

The SBIR is a highly competitive program that encourages domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research and Development that has the potential for commercialization. The Phase II grant awarded to NGCodec, Inc. is based on the results achieved in Phase I and the scientific and technical merit and commercial potential of the project proposed in Phase II of the project.

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