LED lighting company Luminus Devices was acquired by San'an, a Chinese lighting company, for $22 million. The M&A is a bleak outcome for investors. During it's eleven years in business, the Billerica-based startup raised over $150 million from the venture capital firms Argonaut Private Equity, Braemar Energy Ventures, Paladin Capital Group, Stata Venture Partners, CMEA Ventures, Battery Ventures, DFJ, DFJNE, and Eastward Capital. Luminus, which once sold products to clients like Philips, Samsung, and LG, will continue to operate independently within San'an's subsidiary Lightera.
It is not easy to succeed as a startup in the lighting business, and the firm's annual revenue in 2012 was only $17 million, reports Greentech Efficiency. While the loss is significant, Luminus is not the worst of the victims in the recent Chinese buying spree. Chinese government incentives for energy efficiency have prompted capital-rich companies to snatch up struggling American cleantech companies. According to Gigaom, solar startup Miasole and battery maker A123 Systems were hit with harder losses when bought by Chinese companies Hanergy and Wanxiang. There is danger, however, of oversaturating the Chinese market which could generate changes in current LED market trends
