Semiconductor M&A Accelerates in 2019
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Soraa, a developer and manufacturer of advanced lighting products and gallium nitride on gallium nitride (GaN on GaN) LED technology, plans to open a new semiconductor fabrication plant in Syracuse, New York. The company will build a new state-of-the-art GaN on GaN LED fabrication facility in partnership with the State of New York and in coordination with SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE).
Soraa expects production to start in the second half of 2016. The company currently has an LED fabrication plant in Fremont, California.
Soraa said the new facility will support a revenue stream of more than $1 billion. It expects to employ at least 300 people.
“Syracuse is an optimal location for the new fabrication facility for a number of reasons including the innovative high-tech vision and strategy of Governor Cuomo; the ability to attract some of the best and brightest scientists and engineers in the world; and the capacity to tightly control the product quality and intellectual property around our lighting products through our partnership with SUNY Poly CNSE,” said Jeff Parker, CEO of Soraa, in a statement. “Since we launched our first product in 2012, global market reception for our high quality of light LED products has been phenomenal and sales have soared. The new facility will significantly increase our manufacturing capacity to meet this growing demand.”
GaN on GaN is thought to be the next generation technology for LED manufacturing with the expectation that it will be lower cost than other technologies such as on GaN and silicon. The potential market size is huge with LED lighting expected to account for 31 percent of the overall $82.1 billion lighting market in 2015, according to an earlier report by LEDinside, a division of the Taiwan-based market intelligence firm TrendForce.
Soraa states that its LEDs, using its proprietary GaN on GaN LED technology, “emit more light per LED material than any other LED; handle more electric current per area than any other LED; and the company’s products produce best-in-class color quality with full spectrum light similar to sun-light, while also delivering the brightest beams.”
In 2014, Soraa claimed the industry’s first full-visible spectrum line of LED light engines. The new light engines use 50 percent less power; have a higher center beam intensity (CBCP) than current integral LED fixtures, and allow fixtures to be 50 percent smaller due to their small diameter and low profile. It also features a novel heat sink design that enables low temperature operation and a lifetime of 50,000 hours.
Soraa was founded in 2008 by three pioneering professors in engineering and semiconductors -Dr. Shuji Nakamura, Nobel Laureate and inventor of the blue laser and LED; Dr. Steven DenBaars, founder of Nitres, and Dr. James Speck of U.C. Santa Barbara's College of Engineering.
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