View, Inc. is an American glass systems manufacturer headquartered in Milpitas, California. It makes and sells smart glass systems based on electrochromism.
Video View, Inc.
History
Founding
The company was founded as eChromics by Paul Nguyen in Santa Rosa, California in April 2007 to develop smart glass using electrochromism. The company raised a Series A round of funding from Sigma Partners and Khosla Ventures shortly after its founding, and Sigma and Khosla took over control of the company and received preferred shares. The company was renamed to "Soladigm" in October 2007. In December 2008, the company appointed Rao Mulpuri as CEO. Soladigm moved its headquarters to Milpitas, California after reconditioning a Seagate Technology factory. In January 2009 Nguyen was removed as CTO and was fired the next month.
Litigation
The company took a series of other actions against Nguyen's interests, which led Nguyen to file suit in January 2010. The parties agreed to arbitration, and in December 2015, the arbitrator ruled in Nguyen's favor, As of June 2017 additional litigation was still underway due to Nguyen's challenge to further actions taken by the company to restructure the company and its board.
Electrochromic technology has been discussed at least since the 1964 New York World's Fair but it took until the 1990s for any company to sell the first products using it.
In 2009 the company learned about a factory in Milpitas owned by Seagate that had sputter deposition equipment in it, which Seagate was intending to junk; the company under Mulpuri's leadership acquired it and hired many of the employees who had worked for Seagate.
The company's technology involves depositing five layers of metal oxide and two conductor layers that are altogether 1 micron thick on a piece of glass, and laying another piece of glass on top; and applying small voltage changes in the conducting layers which change the color in the metal layers. View Dynamic Glass also blocks 99% of UV light.
The company had licensed intellectual property related to using this approach in large panels from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The company used the sputtering equipment to perfect the technique and to try to make it cost efficient.
In February 2011 the company announced that it intended to start shipping its product out of the Mississippi factory in the first quarter of 2012. Soladigm changed its name to View, Inc. in November 2012 when it emerged from semi-stealth mode. View, Inc. began shipping to customers from its new factory in Olive Branch near the end of the third quarter of 2012.
One of the company's main competitors is Minnesota-based SAGE Electrochromics, which was acquired by the French company Saint-Gobain in 2012. In December 2012 Sage filed a patent infringement suit against View; View counter-sued a few months later.
Maps View, Inc.
References
External links
- Official website
Source of article : Wikipedia
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