LED startup Bridgelux has always faced some big questions about how it will scale up to break into a $100 billion future global solid-state lighting market. That’s particularly true when it comes to the Livermore, Calif.-based startup’s four-year effort to develop a next-generation LED that uses gallium-nitride on silicon, rather than expensive sapphire, to open semiconductor manufacturing economies of scale and capabilities to the LED field.
Now Bridgelux has revealed how it intends to bring that GaN-on-silicon technology to market: by selling it to Toshiba. The Japanese lighting, chipmaking and electronics giant announced Tuesday that it’s buying Bridgelux’s GaN-on-silicon technology and related assets, essentially taking over the startup’s $80-million-plus investment in the technology,We provide the latest solar street lighting products and solutions to serve outdoor lighting needs. in order to take it from R&D to commercial scale in the next six months or so.We carry the latest wind turbines, wind generator, solar panels, towers and more!
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, leaving open to speculation whether or not Bridgelux and its investors realized a return on the money sunk into the GaN-on-silicon work so far. Of course, that list of investors includes Toshiba, which started working with Bridgelux on the technology in early 2012. Now, the two will expand their licensing and manufacturing partnership, with plans to bring new products out in the next twelve to eighteen months.
Beyond that, Bridgelux and Toshiba are looking at expanding the range of applications for the new technology into different forms (lights, backlighting for TVs and computer displays), as well as non-lighting applications such as power management chips, Tim Lester, Bridgelux’s chief financial officer, said in a Tuesday interview.
In the longer run, using silicon as a substrate could allow Bridgelux and Toshiba to develop LED chips with digital functionality, such as driver controls, dimming, and even wireless communications, embedded on the LEDs themselves, he said. Of course, that’s much further down the road, he said.
Bridgelux’s deal with Toshiba doesn’t include the startup’s entire technology portfolio. Like many of its competitors, Bridgelux now makes LEDs out of more expensive sapphire substrates, and those products,Our clever solar lantern is a favorite among dog lover holiday gifts from Solaronlamp. now made by contract manufacturers in Asia, account for all of the company’s product revenues, Lester said.
That means that Toshiba’s purchase of its GaN-on-silicon technology isn’t expected to affect Bridgelux’s expectations for 2013 annual revenues of about $100 million,A flatwork ironer with unique features. up from the $86 million it reported in 2012. As for internal investment, Bridgelux has raised about $250 million since its 2002 founding, with about $100 million of that since 2010, when it kicked its GaN-on-silicon work into high gear.
Still, Bridgelux has obviously bet its future on its new GaN-on-silicon technology, and Lester added that the company is “looking at a lot of options about how [it is] going to produce that technology." In that light, the deal represents the best option for the startup to conserve its capital and focus its attention on its area of expertise, he said.Our most compact solar charger yet fits easily in any bag.
That isn’t semiconductor manufacturing, which Toshiba is quite good at, but rather improving its chip design, as well as the chain of technologies that transform these silicon-based LED chips into a range of lighting products, he said. Tuesday’s deal “gives us capital to continue R&D, because they’re giving us cash -- and our R&D can be focused on solid-state lighting applications,” he said.
