Kateeva Inc. (Menlo Park, Calif.), a 2008 startup founded to manufacture and supply production equipment for organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, has appointed Alain Harrus as CEO.
Formerly known as TJet Technologies Inc., Kateeva is developing an inkjet-based printing method to allow the mass production of large-scale, flexible OLED displays that will also be low-cost the company claims. The firm is backed by investors that include: Applied Materials, DBL Investors, Madrone Capital Partners, Musea Ventures, New Science Ventures, Sigma Partners, Spark Capital, and Veeco.
Harrus joins Kateeva from Crosslink Capital, a San Francisco-based venture capital company where he led the firm's semiconductor and energy technology investment activities. Prior to his involvement in venture capital, Harrus worked in process technologies for semiconductors. He served as a research scientist at Bell Labs and later as chief technology officer at Novellus Systems, now part of Lam Research.
At Novellus, Harrus championed the use of copper metallization for chip production and helped to take the company above $1 billion in annual revenue.
Harrus rounds out a management team at Kateeva that includes: Conor Madigan, pre, ident and co-founder; Steve Van Slyke CTO and OLED technology co-inventor; and Eli Vronsky executive vice president of product development.
"Like audacious breakthroughs that sparked advances in semiconductor manufacturing, Kateeva's solution could do the same for flexible and large-size OLEDs," said Harrus, in a statement issued by Kateeva. "Until now, there were no practical manufacturing technologies to cost-effectively mass-produce these OLEDs. Kateeva's inkjet manufacturing equipment solution changes that. And the enabling implications for manufacturers of flexible and large-size OLED displays are really exciting."
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