Haylo Labs, a UK company recently established by former WaveOptics CEO David Hayes, has acquired microLED developer Plessey Semiconductors.
Haylo says it also plans to invest more than £100 million scaling Plessey’s production capacity over the next five years at the firm’s GaN-on-silicon site in Plymouth and beyond, in anticipation of fast-growing demand for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications.
“This is a defining moment for British tech,” said Hayes, who previously oversaw the sale of Oxford-based diffractive waveguide developer WaveOptics to the US tech firm Snap, Inc.
“Plessey has built the world’s most advanced microLED platforms, with the highest efficiency to date, and is one of the only facilities in the world that can offer customers an end-to-end design and manufacturing facility with technology and talent that surpasses rivals anywhere globally.”
Plessey's Plymouth, UK, site
Management team
Following completion of the deal Hayes is now Plessey CEO, with previous incumbent Keith Strickland shifting to CTO. Haylo co-founders Claire Valoti and Richard Smith have been appointed CGO (chief growth officer) and COO respectively.
Strickland said: “The Haylo Labs acquisition will accelerate Plessey’s commercial scaling, bringing transformative microLED and optical computing technologies to the global market.
“We are focused on expanding our manufacturing footprint here in Plymouth and strengthening our engineering talent pool. This investment underscores our commitment to sustainable growth and innovation in the UK.”
According to filings with the UK’s Companies House register, Haylo was set up by Hayes and colleagues in March 2025. The same team is behind Haylo Ventures, described as a deeptech venture operator whose portfolio includes perovskite device developer Helio Display Materials, and the AR startup ARtGlass.
“We are thrilled to have acquired Plessey and to build on its proud history here in Plymouth,” the firm told optics.org. “MicroLED is set to transform the future of AR, VR and advanced computing, and Plessey will be at the heart of that global growth.
“Our ambition is to take the company to the next level - creating skilled jobs, scaling world-class innovation, and putting Plymouth on the map as a hub for next-generation semiconductor manufacturing.”
Plessey’s microLEDs
One of the oldest names in European electronics, Plessey Semiconductors was founded back in 1956 but in recent years the company has narrowed its focus, initially to LEDs, and then the emerging technology of microLEDs.
In early 2012 the company acquired the University of Cambridge spin-out CamGaN, enabling it to produce gallium nitride (GaN) emitter devices on silicon substrates - and the potential to scale production to levels not possible with conventional LED approaches.
In principle microLED technology, which is generally understood to mean individual red, green, and blue emitters measuring up to 100 µm in size, offers a number of advantages over current organic LED and LCD displays.
These include significant improvements to brightness, color gamut, contrast, response time, lifetime, and energy efficiency. However, their tiny size means that a huge number of LEDs are needed to create large-scale displays, limiting their use to ultra-premium TVs.
Better prospects are expected for the kind of small-scale displays required for near-eye AR/VR applications, with market research firm Omdia seeing potential in smart glasses for outdoor use where brightness is critical.
Having developed novel technology including red emitters based on the GaN-on-silicon platform, in 2020 Plessey signed a long-term commercial agreement with the technology giant Facebook, whose parent company Meta is a key player in AR smart glasses.
According to its own Companies House filings Plessey’s sales revenues have grown significantly since that deal was struck, with the most recent set - for the 12 months ending June 2024 - showing a pre-tax profit of £10.5 million on sales of £56 million.
Recent months have seen the company invest in the manufacturing capability of both its 6-inch and 8-inch microLED wafer processing lines, while in January 2025 the firm announced that with Meta it had developed the world’s brightest red microLED display suitable for AR glasses.
Goertek connections
While Haylo and Plessey have not revealed the cost of the acquisition, the deal has been financed via a $100 million, five-year loan from the Chinese technology firm Goertek. The pledged £100 million investment to expand capacity will come in part from reinvested profits.
Further Companies House filings indicate that Goertek recently acquired a minority stake in Haylo Ventures, while the Chinese company has also worked closely with WaveOptics.
In 2018, when David Hayes was the Oxford startup’s CEO, WaveOptics signed an exclusive production partnership with Goertek to support high-volume manufacturing of diffractive waveguides for AR applications.
According to the legal newswire MLEx, Goertek is now set to become Plessey’s manufacturing partner outside of the UK following the Haylo deal.
While the technological promise of microLED displays has been evident for some time, the emerging sector suffered a major blow last year when Apple decided not to use ams Osram-produced microLEDs in its latest smart watch - which until then had been seen as a “cornerstone” project.
Apple’s decision prompted Austria-headquartered ams Osram to mothball its state-of-the-art microLED manufacturing facility in Kulim, Malaysia, a decision expected to cost it hundreds of millions of euros.
Platform shift
That does not seem to have dimmed Haylo’s enthusiasm for the technology, with the company citing a report from BIS Research that forecasts explosive market growth over the next decade.
Haylo also outlined its strategy in a recent LinkedIn post highlighting Meta’s $3.5 billion investment in EssilorLuxottica, the eyewear firm behind major brands like RayBan and Oakley.
“AI-powered smart glasses aren’t a side bet, they’re the next platform shift,” Haylo wrote. “Meta now dominates 60%-plus of this emerging market and is targeting 10 million units per year by 2026.
“But let’s be real, the hardware isn’t there yet. High-volume manufacturing of AR glasses remains one of the toughest technical and operational challenges in the space.
“That’s exactly why we built Haylo. As ex-WaveOptics and Snap Inc. executives, we’ve seen these scaling issues up close. From optics to microLEDs, supply chains to industrialisation, bringing AR glasses from prototype to product is a multi-layered challenge. This is more than the next wearable. It’s the next computing platform. The real question isn’t ‘if’ the shift is coming, it’s who can actually build it.”
Aside from the AR displays potential, Haylo and Plessey suggest that the technology could be repurposed to create optical processing units (OPUs), to perform AI operations that currently consume vast amounts of energy.
“OCUs represent a new generation of light-based chips that are faster, cooler, and more energy-efficient than today’s silicon devices,” they state. “Plessey is committed to building the hardware of the future, leveraging its expertise to develop real-world optical computing solutions at scale.”
Source: optics.org
