The firm will use the funds to add to its product portfolio, team, and strategic partnerships.
Most of the new funding comes from new investors. A new investor led the round, with participation from existing shareholders including Wellington Partners, Teknoinvest, Nano Future Invest, Energy Future Invest, Foundation Asset Management and others. Carnegie Investment Bank acted as placement agent. GTK Partners is Glo's strategic advisor. Total funding is about $115m to date.
Glo was spun off from Lund University's Nanometer Structure Consortium (nmC) in September 2005 to commercialize LEDs using the proprietary heterostructured semiconductor nanowire technology research of the team of Solid State Physics professor & nmC head Lars Samuelson (Glo's chief scientific officer). Specifically, Glo develops nanowire LEDs (nLEDs) based on non-polar m-plane gallium nitride materials. By using readily available, low-cost and large-area silicon substrates with mass-production-friendly technologies, the LEDs can emit at brightness levels suitable for general illumination applications and with performance equal to or better than existing state-of-the-art planar chips, yet at much lower manufacturing cost at the die level, it is claimed. Glo controls a portfolio of patents and patent applications covering innovations in nanowire epitaxial growth and process technologies made by the Lund team and by Glo itself. The firm says that nLED technology sidesteps the limitations of the common planar LEDs, offering high-efficiency, stable red, green and blue emitters using a single material system. With a 60-person R&D and operations facility at Glo-USA Inc in Sunnyvale, CA, the company is focused on delivering color stability with high color rendering without the need for phosphor conversion, all using standard manufacturing equipment and materials.
"We and our customers are excited about the market entry of our first-generation LED products, demonstrating superior color and competitive efficiencies," says Glo's CEO Fariba Danesh. "Glo's products are next-generation light sources that go beyond the technology limitations of standard planar LEDs. We are aggressively growing our capabilities and strategic partnerships to provide nLED products for all applications."
To further accelerate growth, the firm has augmented its management team and board of directors:
Bart Markus, a partner at Wellington Partners, is now chairman. Bart and Wellington (who have been funding advanced semiconductor ventures for more than a decade) have been investors in Glo since 2010. Kambiz Hooshmand, former CEO of AMCC Semiconductor and former group VP at Cisco, has joined Glo's board. Kambiz serves on the board of public company Infinera, is an advisor to private equity firm SilverLake Sumeru, and is a co-founder of Archimedes Ventures. Shuo Zhang, VP of worldwide mobile sales for Cypress Semiconductor, has joined Glo's board. She has served in various senior management positions in sales and marketing while at Cypress. Previously, Shuo held senior marketing management positions at Avago Technologies and Altera Corp. James V. McCanna has joined as chief financial officer. He was previously CFO of private company iWatt (sold last year in registration for $345m) and has 30 years of experience as a financial officer in technology companies. A sales and support office has been established for the Asian region in Tokyo, Japan.
