Sarnoff Spin-off, Lightscape Materials Inc., Secures Series A Funding from leading Electronic Component Companies
March 25, 2009
New company is developing phosphor products engineered for green-friendly Solid State Lighting industry
Sarnoff Corporation today announced the creation of Lightscape Materials Inc., the latest in a series of independent company spin-offs. Lightscape Materials has secured $3 Million in Series A funding from Wisepower Co. LTD and Foosung HDS Co. LTD to develop and market components for a breakthrough, green-friendly Light-Emitting Diode (LED) light bulb and a variety of other phosphor light products for new lighting applications.
Wisepower and Foosung HDS join Itochu Corporation, who is an early stage investor and distributor in Asia for Lightscape Materials.
“The potential for new LED-based lighting products is tremendous and cuts across many traditional industries including display and general lighting,” Gi Ho Park, Wisepower’s Chief Executive Officer. “With Lightscape’s heritage rooted in Sarnoff Corporation’s world-class R&D, we’re confident the company can take advantage of this amazing opportunity.”
As pioneers in phosphor innovation, Lightscape Materials will leverage 60 years of expertise from the first color TV phosphors developed under RCA to diverse applications such as long persistence, EL, PDP, bio-medical, security, and LED applications.
“Lightscape Materials represents Sarnoff’s deep commitment to transitioning R&D technology into ground breaking products that make a difference in their market,” said Dr. Don Newsome, Sarnoff’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “We’re proud to see Lightscape take this next step in developing world-class LED phosphors for lighting applications.”
Solid State Lighting (SSL)—light generated by LEDs—has the potential to substantially improve the lighting industry. LED lighting is already ubiquitous in backlit handheld LCD devices such as cell phones and PDAs. It also has the potential to replace cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) technology in large LCD displays such as laptops and TVs due to improved efficiency, better color rendering, a thinner profile and LEDs’ lack of mercury.
General lighting applications will benefit from LEDs’ high efficiency allowing the lamp to draw much less electricity per lumen than traditional incandescent bulbs. The rugged form allows lighting designers to break free from standard lamp designs and with bulb longevity 25 times that of a traditional light bulb, frequent bulb changes will be a thing of the past.
“Lightscape Materials will bring a business focus and technical expertise to the development of LED phosphor materials to meet the emerging needs of the LED industry, enabling LED packagers and luminaire makers to better customize LED lighting solutions,” said Gerard Frederickson, Chief Executive Officer and one of the Founders of Lightscape Materials. “Wisepower and Foosung share our vision of contributing to the growth of the SSL industry and will be strategic partners going forward.”
About Sarnoff Corporation
Sarnoff Corporation delivers vision, video and semiconductor technology innovations that empower government and commercial clients to see/sense, understand and control complex environments. Founded in 1942 as RCA Laboratories, Sarnoff makes continuous breakthroughs in real-time video processing for defense, security and surveillance; ICs, lasers, imaging and sensing devices; end-to-end video solutions. Sarnoff is a subsidiary of SRI International.
About Lightscape Materials
Lightscape Materials Inc., a Sarnoff spin-off, develops and supplies novel high performance photo-luminescent phosphors designed for use by the LED industry to enable new lighting products. Lightscape Materials will provide the industry with a variety of phosphor materials options to expand the adoption of LEDs into hundreds of application-specific high brightness LED product applications.
About Wisepower Co. LTD
Wisepower is a leading supplier of Li-polymer batteries for mobile appliances in Republic of Korea. Its customers include cellular phone manufacturers such as LG Electronics, Pantech, and KTFT. The company has shown profit for the last 11 years. Wisepower is a listed company in KOSDAQ (040670).
About Foosung HDS Co. LTD
Foosung HDS was founded in 2008 to establish corporate strategy for Foosung affiliates. Foosung is concentrating in environment-related technologies including CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) and specialty gas for semiconductor processes.
About Itochu Corporation
Itochu Corporation (www.itochu.co.jp) is one of Japan’s leading trading companies and is engaged in a wide variety of businesses, including textiles, machinery, aerospace, information technology, multimedia, metals, energy, chemicals, forest products, food, retail, financial services and so forth.
