Bridgelux Sells LED Technology to Toshiba

June 3, 2013

Electronics giant Toshiba Corp., Tokyo, Japan, is pushing further into the LED lighting market. LED lighting manufacturer Bridgelux, Livermore, Calif., agreed to sell its gallium-nitride-on-silicon (GaN-on-Si) technology and related assets to Toshiba in a deal that also calls for the companies to strengthen and extend their strategic technology collaboration through an expanded licensing and manufacturing partnership.

In a partnership dating back to Jan. 2012, Bridgelux and Toshiba have collaborated on developing GaN-on-Si LED technologies. This led to an announcement by Toshiba that they had achieved world-class performance for 8-inch GaN-on-Si LED wafers and had begun mass production of white LEDs. These milestones were achieved using Bridgelux’s crystal growth and LED device technologies and Toshiba’s advanced silicon processes and manufacturing technologies. 

“Our agreement with Toshiba marks a tremendous milestone in our long history of working closely together, allowing Bridgelux to capitalize on our strong core LED technology platform, providing us with significant new capital for growth, and reducing our capital requirements,” Brad Bullington, CEO of Bridgelux, said in a release. “This agreement also allows us to focus on what we do best, and what we think the market needs most at this point in time: commercializing, ‘productizing’ and bringing to market LED-based solid-state lighting technologies alongside a proven global scale semiconductor manufacturing partner. We are one step closer to becoming the world’s leading solid-state lighting technology architecture company.”

The newly enhanced strategic relationship will provide for more collaboration on the development of next-generation LED chips and platforms, as well as a manufacturing arrangement securing Bridgelux a source of supply for GaN-on-Si-based LED chips, the companies said. The GaN-on-Si assets included in the sale, and the related Bridgelux employees, will remain onsite at Bridgelux’s headquarters in Livermore after the transaction closes to assure continued technical and business collaboration between the companies.