The deal, whose terms were not disclosed, is the latest move by a solar startup to seek a deep-pocketed backer so it can compete in a global marketplace increasingly dominated by Chinese companies. In April, for instance, French energy conglomerate Total agreed to acquire a majority stake in SunPower, the Silicon Valley solar panel manufacturer and power plant developer.
“We have grown to a certain size and getting to the stage where we can have a larger footprint across the world and grow our business even further meant that having a strategic partners made a lot of sense,” Conrad Burke, Innovalight’s chief executive, said in an interview Monday. “We needed substantially more capital and resources.”
For the chemical giant, Innovalight’s silicon ink adds to its portfolio of materials used in photovoltaic cell manufacturing, according to Rob Cockerill, DuPont’s business manager.
“The solar market is certainly one of the highest growth and attractive markets in the electronics segment,” Cockerill said. “Innovalight was a natural fit with DuPont.”
Innovalight’s trajectory tracks the upheaval in the nascent Silicon Valley solar industry over the past several years.
Backed by investors that include Sevin Rosen Funds, ARCH Venture Partners and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Innovalight was founded to manufacture high-efficiency solar cells. But the company abandoned that strategy after installing a 10-megawatt assembly line in late 2008 as low-cost Chinese rivals backed by state banks ramped up production and entered the United States market.
Faced with raising hundreds of millions of dollars to build its own factories, Innovalight instead turned its erstwhile competitors into customers for its patented silicon ink. When printed on a standard silicon wafer, the ink can increase a photovoltaic cell’s efficiency by 1%. Innovalight has signed up Yingli, JA Solar and other big Chinese solar manufacturers as customers, supplying silicon ink and licensing its technology.
“The latest statistics show that 80% of solar cells are coming from the Asia region so it behooves us to focus on that area,” Burke said.
DuPont will retain Innovalight’s team and Burke will serve as general manager of what will be called DuPont Innovalight.
