Photobit completes $25-million finance round
Photobit (Pasadena, CA) has completed its second round of financing, securing liquid assets of $25 million. Investors in the company include, among others, Hitachi Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) and Intel Capital, the strategic investment program of Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, CA). Photobit makes CMOS image sensors and owns the rights to high-performance image-capture technology developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA). The company now can develop a closer working relationship with Intel in order to gain insight into the imaging needs of the PC applications market, says Sabrina Kemeny, chairman and CEO of Photobit. In addition, the company will exploit Hitachi's knowledge as a supplier of semiconductors to the mobile products and cellular handset market in order to develop single-chip imaging capabilities for those markets, says Kemeny.
Roper Scientific and Redlake Imaging consolidate
Roper Industries Inc. (San Diego, CA) has consolidated Roper Scientific MASD Inc. (San Diego, CA) and Redlake Imaging Corp. (Morgan Hill, CA) to form Redlake MASD Inc. The facilities in Morgan Hill will be closed and all operations moved to the San Diego location, which has the larger production capabilities, as well as ISO 9001 processes. Roper Scientific MASD, formerly a division of Eastman Kodak (Rochester, NY), was founded in 1982 and specializes in motion analysis. Formed in 1961, Redlake Imaging develops and markets high-speed imagers.
NEC spins off new semiconductor company
NEC Corp. (Santa Clara, CA) will spin off its Compound Semiconductor Device Division into a new company, effective October 2001. The division designs and manufactures optical semiconductor devices that include photodetectors and lasers, as well as making a wide range of silicon and gallium-arsenide radio-frequency and microwave components. The spinoff will launch with paid-in capital of $105 million and is expected to generate first-year sales of $1 billion. The new company will be headquartered in Kawasaki, Japan with research and product development facilities in Kansai. While manufacturing will initially be done at current NEC and contractor facilities, upon divestiture the new company will be free to pursue new manufacturing relationships.
GretagMacbeth buys McMahan Electro-Optics
GretagMacbeth (Regensdorf, Switzerland) has acquired McMahan Electro-Optics Inc. (Research Triangle Park, NC). McMahan develops and markets spectroradiometric instruments and software to measure and characterize optical radiation in the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared spectral ranges for use in graphic arts, commercial lighting, and architectural applications. GretagMacbeth makes spectrophotometers, densitometers, and color-quality control and color-formulation software. The acquisition will enhance manufacturing efficiencies, says Robert McMahan, president of McMahan Electro-Optics. Beyond that, he adds, the combined firms are now better positioned to supply light-characterization instruments for the emerging market of light-emitting diodes used in general illumination.
Philips and E Ink collaborate on paperlike displays
Philips Components (Slatersville, RI), a business group of Royal Philips Electronics (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), will jointly develop technology for paperlike handheld displays with E Ink (Cambridge, MA). As part of the development deal, Philips made a cash investment of $7.5 million in E Ink; the money will also be used to advance research efforts. Philips Components will receive global rights to build and sell handheld display modules using the so-called electronic-ink sheets being developed by E Ink, as well as exclusive rights for an undisclosed period of time to use the displays in personal-digital-assistant and electronic-book applications.
Also in the news . . .
NanoSciences Corp. (Lancaster, PA) was awarded a $70,000 grant from NASA to develop a solar-blind ultraviolet-sensitive photocathode for use in photomultipliers. . . . Radiometer and photometer maker Gigahertz-Optik GmbH (Munich, Germany) has formed a US subsidiary in Newburyport, MA.
John Wallace