Intermolecular, Inc. and Guardian Industries announced today the expansion and extension of their collaborative development program and strategic IP licensing agreement. Guardian, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of coated glass for architectural, automotive, and other applications, has been working with Intermolecular since 2010 on the development of innovative coated glass products targeting a variety of end applications.
The contract extension announced today provides for an immediate increase in resources to be deployed at Intermolecular by both companies. The parties expect to be able to significantly increase the number of new products that will be developed and commercialized resulting from the collaboration through 2017.
“Guardian is committed to growth through product innovation through external partnerships. I believe that having about 25% of our innovation portfolio getting nutrition from diversified industries creates a lot of value. This requires high level crosspollination and Intermolecular is the perfect partner for this,” said Martin Bracamonte, vice president, Science and Technology, Guardian Industries Corp. “We are continuously striving to introduce value-added products to our customers through the integration of our high quality glass with advanced coatings. Intermolecular’s team and proprietary methods are an important part of Guardian’s pursuit of technological leadership in the flat glass industry.”
Under the contract extension, an expanded Guardian and Intermolecular team will work full-time on both sputtered and liquid coatings at Intermolecular’s technology development center in San Jose, CA.
Dave Lazovsky, Intermolecular’s president and chief executive officer, commented, “Guardian is a technology leader in its industry and has been a tremendous collaborative partner. Making this scale of commitment to growth through product innovation is a testament to Guardian’s vision and leadership. Our respective teams have been working extremely well together and we look forward to this next phase of our collaboration.”
Intermolecular’s mission is to improve R&D efficiency and return on investment (ROI) in semiconductor, clean-energy and display sectors by bringing a 10x-100x increase in learning cycles using combinatorial methodologies.