Solaria

Solaria was founded in the early 2000s when the cost of silicon, the raw material for photovoltaics, was a dominant cost of a PV system. Over the next few years, Solaria assembled a multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers, with remarkable design ingenuity, to develop a sophisticated product and manufacturing process.

Solaria has developed a technology platform that unlocks the potential of solar energy allowing it to be ubiquitous and universally accessed. Solaria created one of the industry’s most respected IP portfolios, with over 100 patents encompassing materials, processes, applications, products, manufacturing automation and equipment.

Solaria’s first series of products, known as low-concentration-photovoltaics (LCPV), were fully tested, certified and productized, with over 30 megawatts installed in demanding, utility-grade, deployments around the world. Solaria became synonymous with field-tested, high quality, durable, high-performance LCPV combined with innovative solar tracking arrays.

When silicon costs dramatically declined, and solar panel production shifted towards China, Solaria stood the test of time and developed a unique way to leverage its knowledge and technology.

Solaria created NEXTracker, answering the growing market need for highly integrated and cost-effective tracking systems. Leveraging its depth and breadth in the system domain, NEXTracker was spun-out. Within a year, NEXTracker became the independent provider of tracking systems and grew one hundred fold. A year later, Flextronics acquired it for $335M, and it continues the same growth trajectory. Buoyed by its immense success, Solaria knew that in this new era of solar, it could pave the way for solar everywhere.