London / Plymouth, [20th August 2025] -- Haylo Labs has acquired Plessey Semiconductors, the UK’s leading innovator in microLED display technology.
Haylo Labs has committed to investing over £100 million in the UK over the next five years to scale Plessey’s manufacturing capacity and grow the highly skilled workforce in Plymouth and beyond.
The acquisition strengthens the UK’s position as a global leader in immersive computing and next-generation technology. The international microLED market is forecast to grow from £2.7 billion ($3.7 billion) in 2024 to over £592 billion ($800 billion) by 2034 – driven by demand across augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), automotive displays, premium consumer electronics such as virtual reality headsets and smart glasses, and optical computing.
This comes at a pivotal moment for the sector where these technologies are becoming embedded in everyday products, driving demand for advanced, ultra-efficient displays and optical computing units to unprecedented levels.
Founded in 1956, Plessey Semiconductors is one of Europe’s oldest semiconductor companies and the world’s most technically advanced microLED business.
With a 270-strong team, Plessey has developed a fully integrated platform capable of designing, manufacturing, and engineering next-generation display technologies entirely in-house, a rare global capability. This end-to-end control, combined with a strong intellectual property portfolio, uniquely positions Plessey to lead the scaling of microLEDs from laboratory innovation to high-volume production.
Haylo Ventures, a venture operator dedicated to building and scaling world-class deep tech businesses, established Haylo Labs to focus specifically on the microLED, optical compute, and interconnect sectors.
A microLED is a breakthrough display technology where each pixel is a microscopic LED. Imagine taking a modern 65” HD TV and shrinking it to fit inside half your phone’s SIM card. To put it into perspective, you could fit around 50 microLEDs across the width of a single human hair. Their unique ability to emit light directly at the pixel level results in displays that are brighter, sharper, smaller, and dramatically more energy-efficient than existing technologies – making them essential for a new era in computing.
The processes and tools used to fabricate microLEDs can also be repurposed to create optical processing units (OPUs), which are ideally suited for performing the complex mathematical calculations required by AI operations that currently consume vast amounts of energy.
Optical Computing Units (OCUs) represent a new generation of light-based chips that are faster, cooler, and more energy-efficient than today’s silicon devices. Plessey is committed to building the hardware of the future, leveraging its expertise to develop real-world optical computing solutions at scale.
Citations are omitted