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Osram has acquired a strategic 25.1 percent share in LeddarTech, a Canadian company that develops a proprietary LiDAR technology integrated into semiconductors and sensor modules for self-driving cars and driver assistance systems. LeddarTech specializes in solid-state LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) systems that use infrared light to monitor the area around them, and its advanced optical sensing technology is highly complementary with Osram’s semiconductor products.

Camtek, announced that it has signed a definitive agreement with an affiliate of Principle Capital, a Shanghai-based private-equity fund, to sell its PCB business for $35 million, of which $32 million will be paid in cash upon closing and an additional amount of up to $3 million conditioned upon the PCB business’ financial performance.

Although there are a lot of unknowns at this point about what will be announced at Mobile World Congress Americas in San Francisco in September, it’s a pretty good bet that vendors will be demonstrating their 5G wares, including Nokia.

The power electronics industry is a key part of the semiconductor history. Power electronics markets are steady evolving and continuously diffusing its innovations through the overall semiconductor industry. Numerous mergers & acquisitions (Fairchild Semiconductor and On Semiconductor, Linear Technology and Analog Devices, both in 2016), the emergence of GaN technology, the adoption of SiC solutions (BYD is now proposing a SiC-based on-board chargers) illustrate quite well the dynamism of the power electronics industry.

San Francisco-based ride-hailing service Lyft is setting up its own unit, called “Level Five,” to develop autonomous vehicle technology. The unit is named after the industry term for fully autonomous vehicles.

Initially present in niche markets like MEMS devices, 3D integration is entering in a new era. Fueled by increasing bandwidth needs for moving data in cloud-computing and supercomputing applications, performance-driven markets have adopted 3D stacked technologies in a row.