SunPower, a solar icon once valued in the billions, files for bankruptcy

The history of a homegrown solar giant

Founded by Richard Swanson in Silicon Valley in 1985, SunPower first distinguished itself with world-record solar cell performance — a technical edge that Maxeon maintains today.

When the firm faced financial problems in 2001, Rodgers, a Silicon Valley semiconductor legend and former classmate of Swanson’s, rescued the company with a check for $750,000. It turned out to be one of the better investments in venture capital history; SunPower went public in 2005 and soon reached a multibillion-dollar market capitalization.

In 2006, the firm acquired PowerLight, a Berkeley, California–based solar system designer and installer, for $332 million in cash and stock. The acquisition, finalized in 2007, essentially set off the first wave of large-scale solar installations in the nation. SunPower, along with First Solar, was one of the first solar panel manufacturers to pursue utility-scale projects and develop its own solar farms.

Years later, the financial woes returned, driven by China’s race to lower costs and the difficulty of building SunPower’s higher-end solar panels. In 2011, French oil and gas major Total bought a majority ownership stake in SunPower and sought to provide some measure of financial stability in the perennially bumpy industry, which had come to be nicknamed the ​“solar coaster.”

But that financial stability never quite materialized. Throughout the 2010s, as solar plummeted in price and began to gain steam in the U.S., the firm floundered. Its technology costs weren’t falling as fast as those of the conventional solar panels mass-produced in China, and competitors such as Sunrun and Sunnova were elbowing it out of the residential rooftop market.

By the start of this decade, when interest rates soared and California, the biggest rooftop solar market in the U.S., slashed its rooftop solar incentives, the firm was in no position to weather the storm. It lost $227 million last year.

The dust is still settling after SunPower’s fall, and much remains unclear. Perhaps Rodgers, alongside Doerr, will be able to yet again breathe new life into the firm’s assets via Complete Solaria. But what’s clear at this point is that the company’s legacy will live on in the people, companies, and technologies it has influenced — and in the ongoing clean energy transition it helped spawn.