TechPulse 360

Bridgelux sees higher performing LEDs by the end of the year

Bridgelux may be more fortunate than many Silicon Valley startups.

The Sunnyvale maker of LED chips for the commercial lighting market has a substantial sum of money in the bank after raising $30 million in March. It also has products in the market, announcing in June volume shipments of its latest NLX-5 energy-saving diode.

So even as the downturn ripples through a worried venture community, Bridgelux will stick to its business plan to break even in the fourth quarter of next year, says CEO Mark Swoboda.

“We won’t build a factory anytime soon,” Swoboda concedes. Instead the company will rely on partnerships to expand production capacity if necessary.

But “we won’t derail the progress we have made up to now,” he says.

Underlying Bridgelux’s confidence is the likelihood of an explosive market for high-efficiency LED lighting fixtures – a market that should find LEDs increasingly attractive as costs per lumens, or light output, continue to come down.

The NLX-5, Bridgelux’s fifth generation chip, offers a 15 to 20 percent performance improvement over its predecessor, and another 10 to 15 percent improvement is expected before the end of the year.

Swoboda says the promise of a 1 to 2 year payback for LED lighting should make it popular in the commercial market even if up-front costs for the equipment are higher. LEDs also have none of the mercury found in compact fluorescent bulbs.

Bridgelux says in its established technology is leading the company back to the fund raising market with the goal of raising another $25 million to $30 million between November and January. Many investors may see it as the last opportunity to put money into the company, Swoboda says.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under Alternative Energy, chips, Clean Tech, startups, venture capital. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.