Next Level Electronics acquisition gives Lightyear freedom in power converters

In 2016, a dozen engineers started to meet on Monday evenings and sometimes Saturdays to work on power converters in their own time. They knew each other from the student team that had participated in the 2013 and 2015 World Solar Challenges, where they had built a motor controller that was more reliable than the ones commercially available at the time. Their hobby became serious and after a year, the group decided to found the company Next Level Electronics (NLE).

All the while, most of the engineers also worked part-time for Lightyear, which had started in 2016 as well, as a spinoff of the same student team. Over the years, the activities got ever more entangled. Arjo van der Ham co-founded both companies and doubled as the CTO of Lightyear and the director of NLE. In 2020, the NLE team extended its efforts to the development of circuit board-based motors, with Lightyear as its customer. Supported by funding from the Dutch SME Innovation Stimulus for Regional and Top Sectors (MIT), granted just last year, this project was completed successfully, but it failed to interest other takers. These wrinkles are now ironed out by Lightyear’s acquisition of NLE.