Flat Not Broke: Candescent Technologies Corp., the...

Flat Not Broke: Candescent Technologies Corp., the Silicon Valley start-up that is America’s last best hope to compete with Asia in flat-panel displays, will announce today that it has raised another $56.7 million in private funding, bringing the company’s total to about $230 million.

San Jose-based Candescent has been toiling since 1991 to create flat-panel screens with the same resolution, brightness, color and viewing angle of a computer monitor. Although flat-panel technology was created at Westinghouse Electric Corp. in the 1960s, U.S. firms were reluctant to make heavy investments in the technology and in effect ceded the market to electronics manufacturers in Japan and Korea.

Candescent is developing a technology it calls ThinCRT, which the company says uses less power and promises superior performance compared with the active-matrix liquid-crystal displays (AMLCDs) made in Asia and used in notebook computers and other devices.

“This offering confirms that Wall Street will, in fact, make long-term investments in fundamental technologies that have a real potential for creating new markets and redefining old ones,” said Harry Marshall, Candescent’s chairman and chief executive.

Hewlett-Packard Co., Sevin-Rosen and Citicorp are some of the investors in the latest round, which is expected to last the company until a public offering sometime next year, said Stewart Hough, Candescent’s marketing manager. The company plans to produce flat-panel displays for palmtop computers, digital cameras, and test and measurement equipment in early 1998.

John Rossi, a managing director of Robertson Stephens, said the amount of new capital shows a vote of confidence in Candescent’s technology.