Quick Take
Ambient Photonics’ low-light solar cell technology showed great promise for helping reduce reliance on single-use batteries in electronic devices. The company chose Scotts Valley for its headquarters and manufacturing facility, even as many technology companies were moving their production facilities overseas. Despite promising deals with major consumer electronics producers, the company fell short on funding and had to fold.
Just last year, Scotts Valley-headquartered Ambient Photonics seemed on the brink of success, working toward its goal of reducing the need for single-use batteries in electronic devices. Its manufacturing facility was operational, its miniature solar cells were being used in a new keyboard from Lenovo, and it had raised more than $60 million in Series A funding. An April 2025 feature in Bloomberg touted the company’s plans to ramp up production to millions of cells in 2026, seek its next funding round and open a second facility.
But now the company has shuttered, its website defunct, its facility closed and its equipment is up for auction. It’s an anticlimactic end for a business that seemed to hold such promise, and had marked a new milestone for Scotts Valley as home to what Ambient said was the first high-volume low-light solar cell manufacturing facility in the U.S.
Founded in 2019, Ambient Photonics’ proprietary technology focused on what are known as low-light photovoltaic slides, which are similar to the solar panels you might see on a building but in miniature form —- closer to the size of a postage stamp or a dollar bill. The cells can harvest energy even in low-light conditions, which makes them well-suited for indoor conditions, and for devices like computer mice, keyboards and remote controls. At one point, a Japanese company was testing out Ambient Photonics’ technology to power its carbon dioxide sensors.
One of the lead investors in the company, At One Ventures founding partner Tom Chi, told Lookout the company got hit hard by tariffs, which made the cost of importing materials and equipment prohibitively expensive. “It’s chaos,” he said of tariffs’ impact on manufacturing. “The cost of capital equipment for processing is borked.”
Chi’s venture capital firm had worked hard to help Ambient Phototronics improve production and yields and sought more investors to keep the company going. Chi said his company even offered to match what other investors were willing to put in, but ultimately, they couldn’t work out a deal.
“We had to make the tough call” to close the company, he said. “We’d worked really hard to get this done. We wish the investment had gone differently, but our team did what we could do.”
During its run, Ambient collaborated with Google, worked with Universal Electronics on a remote control and partnered with Chicony on its wireless keyboards. Lenovo’s self-charging Bluetooth keyboard, with Ambient’s solar cells, was featured last year at CES, the largest consumer electronics trade show in the industry.
Ambient’s 43,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, which the company started working on in late 2022, once housed manufacturing operations for Fox’s mountain biking shocks and had previously been owned by Seagate. In an interview with Lookout in 2024, then-CEO Bates Marshall said 45 of the company’s 70 employees worked in Scotts Valley.
Marshall declined to comment on the factors that led to the closure, but confirmed that “Ambient Photonics concluded operations following an orderly wind-down.”
Last week, the company’s manufacturing facility on El Pueblo Road still bore the Ambient Photonics signs, but showed no other signs of life, and the building’s owners are seeking new tenants. Bill Gilbert, managing partner for Scarborough/Gilbert Partners, which owns the building, said there are currently several companies looking to rent it after its contents are cleared out.
What remains inside is high-tech lab and testing equipment, an industrial washer, storage cabinets, desks and other office equipment, according to the auction listing. The online auction began Tuesday and will continue until Feb. 3.
Meanwhile, Marshall announced on LinkedIn last fall that he’d taken on the role of CEO for Kaimarra, an advanced materials company focused on replacing what are known as forever plastics. Like Ambient Photonics, Kaimarra also spun out of a Boston-based research facility called the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry.
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