Interface Fluidics

Market position

The company states it was the first to offer high-pressure microfluidic testing commercially and cites a first-mover advantage, vertical integration and patent portfolio as differentiators. It reports having established relationships with a large fraction of leading oil and gas companies and an accelerating pace of technology adoption after several years of market education.

Differentiation rests on commercial availability of high-pressure microfluidic tests, in-house control of chip fabrication, software and instrument design, a patent portfolio, and measurement methods validated through a three-year joint industry project with ExxonMobil, Chevron and Equinor. Tests require substantially smaller fluid volumes and shorter turnaround times than conventional core and PVT methods.

Technology

Silicon microfluidic chips are engineered to reproduce reservoir pore structures at micron and sub-micron scale (for example a Flowback chip with 120 nm by 25 µm features representing shale pore geometries, and EOR chips ranging from 1 µm to 15 µm by 70 µm channels). Combined with high-pressure, high-temperature instrumentation and direct optical visualization, the chips support constant composition expansion and bubble/dew point measurement, minimum miscibility pressure, viscosity and density of live oils, oil swelling, foam stability and mobility, wax/scale/asphaltene inhibition, polymer and gas flood screening, and CO2 and hydrogen storage studies. Commercial-scale operation generates large image datasets (thousands of TIFF files and sensor logs per test), handled through an internal data pipeline. The company states it holds a deep patent portfolio, including a patented Flowback chip.

Go-to-market

Sales are direct, supported by technical publications, case studies and word of mouth, with long enterprise sales cycles in the energy sector. Joint industry projects and accelerator-derived relationships (notably Equinor via Techstars) have served as channels; after finding the Alberta oil sands market small and slow, the company pivoted toward faster-moving US customers.

Upstream oil and gas operators and service companies, plus academic and corporate research laboratories. Named users and customers include Equinor, ExxonMobil, Chevron, TotalEnergies, Shell, Cenovus, Suncor, BP, Ovintiv, Saudi Aramco, Petroleum Development Oman, PTT Exploration and Production, Baytex, Primexx Energy Partners, Select Chemistry, Rice University and PUC-Rio.

Geography

Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, with an Edmonton facility and team members across Canada including Toronto and Vancouver. Approximately 10 percent of business is in Canada and the remainder international, with growth cited in Brazil and France and system deployments including a PTTEP laboratory north of Bangkok and PUC-Rio in Brazil.

History

The company was launched in 2015 with Stuart Kinnear as first CEO, David Sinton as CTO and Tom de Haas as COO; a company blog post refers to starting Interface Fluidics in 2016. Early recognition included third place at the Energy New Ventures competition run by the University of Calgary's Hunter Centre. Interface joined the first class of the Techstars Energy Accelerator with Equinor in Oslo, completing the program in December 2018, and raised Series A financing in August 2019 and Series B financing in 2021. Ali Abedini, formerly a post-doctoral fellow in Sinton's lab, joined roughly eight years before 2026 and is COO; Dawna Polson joined as Finance Manager about three years before 2026. Tom de Haas became CEO in July 2024, with Kinnear moving on while remaining an advisor and Sinton serving as board member and executive advisor. In December 2023 the team began building two high-pressure microfluidics systems for customers including PTT Exploration and Production near Bangkok, and PUC-Rio acquired a SapphireLab® in 2024.

Risks & controversies

Cited business challenges include a small initial Alberta oil sands market with long sales cycles, difficulty communicating a niche high-pressure microfluidics technology, and a multi-year effort required to build industry trust. Demand is concentrated in the oil and gas sector, which in Canada faces proposed emissions caps announced around COP26.