Indie Semiconductor buys Exalos AG
US-based autotech firm acquires Swiss photonics specialist
Indie Semiconductor, an automotive technology firm based in California, has acquired privately held Exalos AG, a 20 year old Swiss photonics company, specialising in the design of high-performance optical semiconductors including SLEDs for fibre optic gyroscopes and semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs).
"Exalos’ differentiated solutions immediately expand Indie’s ADAS and user experience product and technology offering to our global tier one and automotive OEM customer base," said Donald McClymont, Indie’s co-founder and CEO.
"Specifically, Indie can now leverage Exalos’ core Super luminescent LED, and SOA technologies to enable Head Up Display (HUD), high brightness visible lighting and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)-based navigational applications and, importantly, to extend our FMCW LiDAR portfolio. We are gaining a well-established team of 17 world class engineers, including the industry’s leading expertise in bright light sources based on a proprietary GaN process. At a higher level, our acquisition of Exalos represents another step in our quest to build a broadline autotech powerhouse.”
“We are excited to join forces with Indie at this key juncture of Exalos’ evolution," said Christian Velez, CEO and founder of Exalos. "Given Indie’s global sales channels and demonstrated scalability, I am confident that together we can take our business to the next level, capitalising on clear product synergies between us and extending our customer reach while preserving the Exalos innovation engine."
Subject to the terms and conditions of the definitive agreement, Indie paid approximately $45 million to Exalos equity holders comprised of 6.6 million Indie Class A common shares. In addition, if certain revenue-based performance targets are exceeded over a 24-month post-closing period, there is an opportunity for such holders to earn up to $20 million more in cash or Indie Class A common shares, at Indie’s election.
