GLO AB establishes new engineering center in Silicon Valley

SUNNYVALE, USA: Lund (Sweden) based nanowire semiconductor LED developer GLO AB announced the closing of an SEK 170 million investment round (approximately $25 million) and establishment of a California-based engineering center to supplement its current efforts in Sweden and Denmark. The company also announced appointment of Fariba Danesh as its CEO.

G. Russell Mortenson, GLO’s executive chairman, said: “We are very pleased to welcome Wellington Partners as a significant new lead investor in this round.” Wellington Partners, headquartered in London/Munich, has been one of the most successful pan-European venture capital firms and has invested in more than 100 companies throughout Europe since its founding in 1991.

Current investors joining in the round in GLO include funds advised by venture capital firms Provider Venture Partners of Stockholm, Hafslund Venture, Agder Energi Venture, and Teknoinvest of Oslo, and VantagePoint Venture Partners of San Bruno, California, all joined by LU Innovation together with LUAB, the investment arm of Lund University (Sweden), as major owners, along with the founders and employees of GLO. “We are excited to join GLO for the next step in its development – taking the technology to production,” said Bart Markus, Wellington General Partner.

In tandem, the company announced that Fariba Danesh is its newly-appointed CEO (VD) of both GLO AB and its wholly-owned US subsidiary, GLO-USA Inc.

Ms. Danesh most recently served as a senior VP & GM of Avago Technologies where her responsibilities included LEDs and laser devices. During her distinguished career, she also previously served as executive VP of Maxtor Corp., CEO of Finisar Corp., CEO of Genoa Corp. and Vice President of Seagate Technology.

“We welcome Ms. Danesh to the senior leadership role at GLO,” said Mortenson. “Her deep experience in III-V semiconductors and high-volume global production and business environments will be very helpful to GLO in its next stage of development.”

Dr. Bo Pedersen will initially continue with GLO as deputy MD supervising the company’s newly-expanded activities in Europe, while Ms. Danesh will be responsible for overall Company supervision and strategy globally as well as direct supervision over the newly-established Silicon Valley (US) efforts.

“I am very excited to help lead GLO in its final steps towards mass production of the world’s first nanowire-based semiconductor LED device in a commercial phase. The wafer and device engineering capabilities at the new company facilities in Sunnyvale along with the strong research team and foundation in Lund will help accelerate initial productisation of this ground-breaking technology,” said Ms. Danesh.

GLO develops novel nanowire-based LEDs at levels of brightness suitable for general illumination applications and with performance equal to or better than current state-of-the-art planar chips, yet at simultaneously dramatically lower cost by using readily available, low-cost and large area silicon substrates with mass-production friendly technologies.