Haylo Labs Buys Plessey to Scale UK MicroLED and Optical Compute Manufacturing

• Haylo Labs has acquired Plessey Semiconductors and committed over £100 million to expand its UK-based manufacturing and engineering capacity.
• The deal positions Plessey to scale production of microLED displays and optical computing units for immersive and AI-powered technologies.

Haylo Labs has acquired Plessey Semiconductors, one of Europe’s oldest chipmakers and a leader in microLED technology. The company plans to invest more than £100 million over five years to grow Plessey’s production footprint and workforce in Plymouth and the surrounding regions.

"This is a defining moment for British tech. Plessey has built the world’s most advanced microLED platforms, with the highest efficiency to date, and is one of the only facilities in the world that can offer customers an end-to-end design and manufacturing facility with technology and talent that surpasses rivals anywhere globally," said David Hayes, Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Haylo Labs, in an official press release. "This acquisition is not just about backing British innovation — it’s about unlocking its global potential in one of the fastest-growing markets over the next decade.”

Plessey has developed a fully integrated platform for designing and manufacturing microLED displays in-house. With 270 employees and a strong intellectual property portfolio, the company is one of the few globally with end-to-end capabilities to take microLEDs from lab to high-volume production. Its technology enables brighter, sharper, and more energy-efficient displays for applications like AR and VR, and the same tools used for microLEDs can also be applied to build optical processing units for AI workloads.

Haylo Labs was created by Haylo Ventures to focus on scaling technologies in microLEDs and optical computing. Bringing Plessey into the fold gives Haylo deep technical capabilities and a strong manufacturing base in the UK. According to figures cited in the announcement, the global microLED market is projected to grow from £2.7 billion in 2024 to over £592 billion by 2034, positioning the UK to take a larger role through this acquisition.

🌀 Tom’s Take:

Plessey is one of the few chip companies with full-stack microLED capability, and that matters in spatial computing. Displays that are efficient and compact are foundational for making AR wearables truly usable in the real world.

Source: Plessey MicroLEDs