Troubles at Nanosolar?
Much-heralded — and much-funded — solar panel company Nanosolar seems to be going through some jarring high-level change. The $100m-funded company — whose investors include Google’s founders, Benchmark Capital, an Apax partnerPartners, and others — no longer has the services of its chief scientist, Chris Eberspacher.
Why not? Because Eberspacher just joined Applied Materials:
Applied Materials, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMAT) announced today that Dr. Chris Eberspacher has joined the company’s Solar Business Group to lead advanced R&D programs. In this new role, Dr. Eberspacher will lead efforts for both silicon and non-silicon based solar materials and will report to Dr. Winfried Hoffmann, chief technology officer of Applied’s Solar Business Group. Before joining Applied, Dr. Eberspacher was most recently chief scientist at Nanosolar, Inc., a solar start-up focused on roll-to-roll processing of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) products.
[Update] After posting this I received a note from Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen. He says that Eberspacher actually “disengaged” with Nanosolar “almost two months ago”, well before joining AMAT. Martin went on to argue that Eberspacher’s departure wasn’t that big a deal, a point upon which we apparently disagree.
If it is privately held and on the edge of extreme success you would think the good Dr. would endure whatever to become filthy rich.
Something is up.
“Martin went on to argue that Eberspacher’s departure wasn’t that big a deal, a point upon which we apparently disagree.”
It would depend on how broad the Nanosolar patents are. Nanosolar may have trouble making improvements, but they do own the existing process and can run with it. Applied Materials has to develop something that is more efficient and/or lower cost, defend itself against obvious claims of patent infringement, and overcome not being first to market.