Renesas sues Navitas over trade secrets
The Japanese semiconductor company Renesas is suing US-based Navitas in the California federal court, claiming the company poached its employees to steal trade secrets for developing next-gen GaN chips.
According to a Reuters report on 22nd July 2026, Renesas alleges that California-based Navitas' CEO Christopher Allexandre and executive Felicia Cheng stole confidential Renesas information for Navitas related to GaN-based chips for data centres.
"Within a short period of time after Allexandre assumed the role of CEO, Navitas announced a new '2.0' strategy that directly mirrored Renesas’s confidential plans — targeting the same customers, the same technologies, and the same market opportunities reflected in the stolen materials," Renesas said in its complaint.
The complaint said that Allexandre and Cheng took confidential PowerPoint presentations to Navitas that contained Renesas trade secrets.
"Any Renesas competitor (like Navitas) could use the information in these presentations to engineer the same secret product specifications Renesas has designed, knowing Renesas’s timelines, to beat Renesas to market to steal billion-dollar contracts," the lawsuit said.
Renesas is seeking monetary damages and an order blocking Navitas from misusing its secrets.
