Soraa is the world's leading developer of solid-state lighting technology built on pure gallium nitride substrates, commonly referred to as GaN on GaN™. Only Soraa uses a pure GaN crystal to create simply perfect light. Soraa's flagship product is the highest-performance LED MR16 halogen replacement lamp on the market.
Soraa was founded in 2008 in Goleta, California, by a team of pioneering professors from the worlds of engineering and semiconductors. In 2007, they made a bet on an LED technology platform completely different than current industry practice, a technology most industry experts at the time considered to be impossible to execute. They bet on Gallium Nitride (GaN on GaN™) substrates for LEDs.
Before Soraa, all LEDs worldwide were made of GaN crystals grown onto a dissimilar substrate: usually sapphire or silicon carbide.
Soraa bet that GaN on GaN™ LEDs would produce more light per area of LED and be more cost-effective than technology based on other substrates. This strategy ran against every trend in the LED industry. But Soraa’s world-class team had the credentials, experience, and vision to make that bet and beat the odds:
That bet paid off: today, Soraa is the LED manufacturer using perfect GaN on GaN™ crystals for its products.
Why use GaN on GaN™ LEDs? They're simply better:
Only Soraa creates GaN on GaN™ lighting products for tomorrow's general illumination market. Perfect crystals mean perfect light.
Professor Nakamura may have single-handedly changed the technological face of the world. His discovery of p-type doping in Gallium Nitride (GaN) and development of blue, green, and white light emitting diodes (LEDs) and blue laser diodes (LDs) has enabled energy efficient, solid-state lighting used in displays, medicine, and the next generation of Blu-Ray optical storage. Now, Dr. Nakamura’s inventions are poised to replace Thomas Edison’s light bulb and save the world billions of dollars in energy costs.
Professor of Materials and Co-Director of the Solid-State Lighting Center at the University of California Santa Barbara, ranked number one in the nation by the National Research Council, Dr. Steven P. DenBaars’ interest in growth of GaN based semiconductors and their application to Blue LEDs, lasers and high power electronic devices lead to the first US university demonstration of a Blue GaN laser diode and more than seven patents pending on GaN growth and processing.
Materials Department Chair at U,C, Santa Barbara, ranked number one in the nation by the National Research Council, Professor Speck has worked extensively on the materials science of GaN and related alloys. He received the Quantum Device Award from the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors in 2007, was named an inaugural MRS Fellow in 2008, received the JJAP Best Paper Award in 2008, became an APS Fellow in 2009, and received the IEEE Photonics Society Aron Kressel Award for his work on nonpolar and semipolar GaN-based materials and devices.
Kim rocketed to fame in the IT world when Samsung appointed him to reinvigorate marketing in 1999. At the time, Samsung was mostly a second-tier brand known for cheap electronics. As Global CMO/EVP New Business Development, he transformed Samsung into a premium consumer brand. Not long after, Kim moved to Intel as SVP/ GM for the Digital Home Group, delivering next-generation SoC (System-on-a-Chip) for web-enabled SmartTVs.
Dr. Caulfield was formerly COO of Ausra, Inc. where he led the repositioning of the company that ultimately led to a strategic partner acquisition, and EVP of Sales, Marketing and Customer Satisfaction at Novellus Systems, Inc. where he oversaw global field operations. He also brings extensive semiconductor industry experience to Soraa having served, over his 17 year tenure, as VP of Semiconductor Operations at IBM
With 20 years of laser diode and LED R&D experience, Mike is a former Executive VP at Philips Lumileds, where he formed and ran the Advanced Laboratories and its research on III-nitride epitaxy, LED device technology, and luminescent materials. He spearheaded many key solid-state lighting advancements, including flip-chip and thin-film flip-chip technologies, photonic crystal LEDs, ceramic phosphors, and advancing understanding of the “droop” mechanism in InGaN-GaN LEDs. A senior member of IEEE, he has published over 70 papers and has over 100 patents in the solid-state lighting field.
Dr. Steranka joined Soraa in June of 2010 and has been in the LED business since 1984. With Hewlett Packard’s Optoelectronics Division, he worked on the successful commercialization of a wide variety of LED products based upon the AlGaAs, AlInGaP, and InGaN materials systems. In 1999, he joined the Agilent-Philips Lumileds Lighting joint venture where he served in many roles including Executive Vice President of R&D; and CTO. With a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Frank has participated in or led the release to market of over 200 LED products.
Neal Woods joined Soraa in July, 2011 as the Senior Vice President of World Wide Operations. Mr. Woods has held a variety of executive manufacturing engineering and manufacturing operations roles at Texas Instruments, Apple Computer, 3Com, and Cisco Systems. He most recently served as Senior Vice President of Operations for Hewlett-Packard’s Imaging & Printing Group. While at HP, he had ownership for IPG’s supply chain, which shipped both high volume and high complex products with annual revenues in excess of $25B. He received his B.S.E.E. degree from Kansas State University.
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Khosla Ventures: a venture capital firm run by people who listen to, analyze, and advise entrepreneurs. We manage a main fund that supports early- and late-stage investments and a seed fund for developing very early-stage experiments. We focus on next-generation energy projects, new materials, mobility, the Internet and silicon technology. Our firm was established in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, who helped turn a computer science project into Sun Microsystems, a multibillion-dollar phenomenon. |
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Founded in 2001, NGEN Partners is a pioneering investor in the cleantech sector. They invest in early to late stage businesses that offer economically valuable products and services that positively affect the environment. With a history in materials science, NGEN has deep expertise in alternative energy, energy efficiency, pollution abatement and green resources. |
Soraa's board of directors includes:
