Infineon’s offer on Wolfspeed terminated due to “National Security concerns”

After acquiring International Rectifier in January 2015, Infineon signed an agreement to acquire Wolfspeed in July 2016 for $850 M. This agreement has first been put on hold by the CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States). The Committee required guarantees on several national security concerns about leaving Wolfspeed in the hands of a non-US company.

As a reminder, the SiC (Silicon Carbide) device maker Wolfspeed was spin-off from Cree in May 2015, and renamed in September of the same year. The objective for Cree was to run their RF and Power electronics activities separately from the LED activities. The two businesses have different gowth rates and investment needs.

The new entity came after Cree acquired APEI (Arkansas Power Electronics Inc.), a North Carolina-based company designing high-performance and high-efficiency converters. APEI’s activity was probably the source of these concerns, as most of their commercial activity is directly linked with military applications of power electronics converters, DoD (Department of Defence) being in need of such systems.

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