Financial - Page 8

Epistar and Lextar announced plans to establish a joint holding company, effectively merging the two companies.

The plan is to delist both companies from Taiwan's stock exchange and list the new company by the end of October 2020. The two companies will continue to operate independently, but the holding company's main focus for its future revenue growth will be on mini LEDs and microLEDs products and technologies.

According to a report from Taiwan's Economic Daily news, a new mini-LED and micro-LED display factory is under planning in Taiwan's Hsinchu Science Park. The new fab is built by Apple (who will invest $334 million) in collaboration with AU Optronics and Epistar.

According to the report, the Science Park Administartion approved Apple, Auo and Epistar's plan on February 18. The new fab will act as an expansion of Apple's existing display center in Taiwan.

AR developer Mojo Vision, announced that it has raised $51 million in its B-1 round. The company has raised more than $159 million to date. The fund was led by New Enterprise Associates, and several strategic VCs participated, including Dolby Family Ventures and Motorola Solutions Venture Capital.

Mojo Vision, still in an R&D stage, develops micro-LED powered AR contact lenses. In June 2019, AR developer Mojo Vision announced that it developed a 14k sub-pixel PPI Micro-LED microdisplay, to power its upcoming AR platform.

UK-based GaN-On-Si MicroLED microdisplay developer Plessey Semiconductor announced a partnership with Facebook - in fact Plessey will dedicated all of its manufacturing operations to support Facebook with its own product development.

Plessey says that its displays will be used to support Facebook's prototypes, and the company will develop new microLED technologies to future AR/VR applications.

High-precision 3D sensing developer CyberOptics Corporation announced that it has received a $1.2 million order for its SQ3000 Multi-Function systems for Automated Optical Inspection (AOI), Solder Paste Inspection (SPI) and Coordinate Measurements (CMM), to be used in the scale-up of micro-LED technologies.

CyberOptics says it expects more micro-LED equipment orders later in 2020. In August 2019 the company announced a $1.3 million order for a system SQ3000 system.

USA-based eLux was established in 2016 as a spin-off from Sharp Labs of America, to commercialize a unique MicroLED production technology. The company was in stealth mode for a few years, and is now finally discussing its technology and business. We talked to the company's president and CEO Jong-Jan Lee, who explains the company's technology, status and plans.

eLux's technology is based on a unique approach that moves microLEDs from wafer to the target substrate without the need of a pick-and-place process. The so-called fluidic process uses microLEDs dispersed in liquid and wells built onto the substrate. The microLED dispersion is spread over the substrate and the LEDs simply fall into place - a sort of self-assembly process, which can be seen in the video above.

Taiwan-based Unity Opto Technology announced plans to invest $1.9 billion NT (around $64 million USD) to setup six new production lines for mini-LEDs and micro-LEDs.

Unity Opto Technology, established in 1993, develops and markets a wide variety of LED products, including LED packages, LED back lighting for displays and automotive LED products.

China-based display producer China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT, owned by TCL) announced a joint-venture with Xiamen Sanan Integrated Circuit (Sanan-IC, owned by San'an Optoelectronics) to develop micro LED materials and production processes and equipment.

The two companies will invest a total of 300 million Yuan (around $43 million USD) in the new venture, with CSoT holding 55%.

MICLEDI, established in Belgium in 2019 as a spin-off from IMEC, announced that it raised €4.5 million to develop next-generation microLED microdisplays for AR applications.

MICLEDI says that it displays will be the smallest and possible on the market - enabled by its new integration technology for microLED on 300 mm wafers, developed in collaboration with imec.

Taiwan-based LED producer Epistar is in talks with China-based LED display maker Leyard Opto-Electronic to setup a Mini-LED and Micro-LED production site in Wuxi, China. The two companies (actually Leyard and Epistar's subsidiary Yenrich Technology) will setup a joint-venture with a budget of $142 million.

Leyard says that the plan is to form the joint venture six months after getting the final approval for the plan. This will enable the production to begin in the new fab in 2023. It is still not clear whether the new fab will produce mini and micro LED chips - or actual displays.