Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:KLIC) (“Kulicke & Soffa,” “K&S” or the “Company”) announced today it has acquired a 100% equity stake in Uniqarta, Inc (“Uniqarta”), a technology company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. This strategic acquisition includes Uniqarta’s patent portfolio and other intellectual property rights. Prior to closing the acquisition in the Company’s fiscal second quarter, Kulicke & Soffa worked extensively with Uniqarta to commercialize their unique LED die transfer technology.
Uniqarta’s Laser-Enabled Advanced Placement (LEAP
) technology disrupts the conventional pick-and-place assembly method with a high-precision, ultrafast laser-transfer placement system. This contact-less approach places large quantities of known good die at unprecedented transfer rates.
These competencies have accelerated Kulicke & Soffa’s development of high-accuracy, next-generation solutions positioned to enable broad adoption of feature-rich, cost-effective display technology. This next-generation LED transfer approach is expected to accelerate adoption of mini LED backlighting while also serving as an enabler for direct-emissive micro LED applications.
TrendForce, a market-leading intelligence provider, anticipates mini and micro LED wafer volumes to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of over 200% through 2025. Over the coming two years, consumer televisions, tablets and notebooks are anticipated to accelerate high-volume adoption of placement equipment.
“Our acquisition of Uniqarta strengthens and extends the overall mini and micro LED technology portfolio at K&S. This investment emphasizes important strategic additions to our competencies, value proposition and participation in the rapidly-evolving advanced display market,” said Bob Chylak, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Kulicke & Soffa.
Ronn Kliger, Uniqarta’s Chief Executive Officer stated, “After collaborating with K&S on the development of a LEAP prototype, we concluded that the best approach to commercialize our technology was to combine it with K&S’s proven interconnect expertise, production capabilities and strong customer base. The combined K&S-Uniqarta team is now well-positioned to address known customer production challenges and accelerate the adoption of next-generation advanced displays.”
Kulicke & Soffa expects to introduce and initiate qualifications of its new advanced display system by the close of its fiscal year 2021.
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