Houston-based Atlas Credit Partners has invested $85 million into an Austin-based semiconductor company that works in the aerospace and defense markets.
The investment into Coherent Logix Inc. will be used for growth capital after the company completed several recent deals.
Atlas focuses on investments and partnerships with medium-sized businesses. Recent investments include an $85 million loan facility for New Jersey-based battery manufacturing company Eos Energy.
The funding is Coherent Logix’s first reported round since a $3 million equity series sale in 2019. The company’s primary markets involve the so-called Space 2.0 sector — an approach to spaceflight relying on smaller, cheaper satellites — and the defense industry.
Coherent Logix provides high-performance semiconductors with low power draw. According to Atlas' announcement, the funding will enable Coherent to concentrate on terrestrial markets.
The semiconductor industry has made a splash in Texas through projects such as Samsung’s $17 billion plant in Taylor, northeast of Austin. Meanwhile, a debate is currently brewing in the Texas Legislature over whether the state should revive elements of the Chapter 313 tax abatement program, which helped convince Samsung to invest in the Lone Star State.
However, there have also been some notable semiconductor losses as of late, such as Skorpios Technologies moving to California after the University of Texas at Austin decided not to renew its lease, and some snubs, like Micron building its $100 billion plant in Central New York instead of Lockhart, south of Austin.
Other major semiconductor manufacturers and suppliers with major presences in Central Texas include NXP Semiconductors, Infineon Technologies AG, Applied Materials Inc. and Tokyo Electron America Inc.
Nationwide, the semiconductor industry gained another boost last year when President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Act into law. The act grants federal subsidies in the form of tax credits and loans to the industry to concentrate chip production in the United States. The Biden administration recently revealed additional guidelines and rules for the CHIPS Act.
