5 December 2011

UCSB spin-off Soraa raises $88.6m

Soraa Inc of Fremont, CA, USA, which is commercializing nitride-based green and blue LEDs and laser diodes, has raised $88.6m of a $90.3m round, according to a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Soraa was founded in 2008 by University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) professors Shuji Nakamura, Steve DenBaars, and James Speck. The CEO is former Intel and Samsung executive Eric Kim. Soraa is funded by Khosla Ventures and New Enterprise Associates (NEA), whose general partner Ravi Viswanathan (a director of Soraa) is listed in the SEC filing in relation to the investment.

Soraa’s laser diodes are based on indium gallium nitride (InGaN) technology and are fabricated on non-polar and semi-polar GaN substrates. The firm says that its direct-diode green and blue lasers offer improvements in performance, size, weight and cost over conventional gas or solid-state lasers for consumer projection displays, defense pointers and illuminators, biomedical instrumentation and therapeutics, and industrial imaging applications.

Most recently, in January, Soraa demonstrated 4 watt blue laser diodes operating at a wavelength of 450nm, claimed to be the highest-power blue laser reported from a monolithic chip. The devices are designed to enable >500 lumen bulb-free projection displays.

Soraa operates vertically integrated fabrication facilities in Silicon Valley and Santa Barbara. Presumably the new investment will fund either product development and commercialization or production capabilities.

Tags: Soraa Blue laser diodes InGaN GaN substrates

Visit: www.soraa.com

Visit: http://sec.gov