Five Qualities to Look for in a Power Electronics Partner

To make the most of silicon carbide, what should the ideal technology partner bring to the table?

The silicon carbide (SiC) revolution is still in its early chapters. While electric vehicles drove the first major wave of adoption, what we are seeing today in power electronics is only the beginning. Across automotive, industrial, renewable energy, AI infrastructure, defense, and emerging immersive technologies, SiC has a multi-decade innovation runway ahead.

At Wolfspeed, we continue to scale 200mm SiC wafer and die production while advancing system-level technologies: MOSFETs, high-power modules, and platforms customers can design around with confidence. From my vantage point, we position our SiC technologies as a foundational platform for how power-dense, efficient, and reliable systems will be built over the next 20 years.

This raises an important question for companies making long-term bets: what should you look for in a silicon carbide technology partner? Based on more than two decades in this industry and my experience navigating multiple technology inflection points as a CTO, five qualities consistently distinguish transactional suppliers from true long-term partners.

1. They design for today’s needs and tomorrow’s realities

In innovation driven markets, a small number of companies have the experience and foresight to translate future system requirements into present day R&D action. These organizations don’t simply respond to customer demand; they anticipate it and engineer backward from where the market is heading.

With SiC, this means understanding how application requirements will evolve over five, ten, and even twenty years and aligning materials, devices, packaging, and manufacturing roadmaps accordingly. The strongest partners sense emerging constraints before they become bottlenecks and ensure the right solutions are ready when customers need them.

From my experience, the most effective way to do this is through tight integration between materials and devices. A vertically integrated capability ensures supply security but equally important that it enables faster feedback loops, higher quality, and better cost control, especially as the industry moves from 150mm to 200mm wafers and beyond. Alignment between crystal growth, wafer processing, and device design accelerates learning and allows products to be tailored to real system-level needs.

2. They build and protect exceptional R&D talent

Technology leadership ultimately comes down to people. The best partners attract engineers and scientists who are motivated by the hardest problems in their field and then give them the environment to do their best work.

Over my 20 years at Wolfspeed, I have taken a very hands-on approach to building teams that are deeply committed to silicon carbide and to long-term impact. From the first interview, I emphasize that this is a two-way decision: we look for exceptional talent, and candidates should look for a place where curiosity, rigor, and ownership are valued.

What makes these exceptionally talented teams effective is the focus. When employees bring forward strong ideas — whether optimizing the source Kelvin connection in a space-constrained over-molded power module, uncovering subtle process residues affecting reliability, or applying AI-enabled process controls to predictive analysis — we invest in them and remove distractions so they can go deep.

A culture that supports problem-solving, cross-disciplinary learning, and effective execution establishes trust, which is essential for lasting technology partnerships.

3. They create a scalable, high-performance technology platform

Silicon carbide is uniquely powerful because it brings together properties that rarely coexist in a single material: wide bandgap, high breakdown field, excellent thermal performance, and strong reliability at high voltages. But materials alone are not enough.

The strongest partners treat SiC as a platform, not a component. At the heart of that platform are scalable technologies, such as 200mm SiC, that enable consistent quality, lower cost at scale, and flexibility across devices, modules, and systems. This platform mindset allows customers to move from qualification to volume production with confidence and visibility into a long-term commercialization path.

With an integrated, U.S.-based R&D and manufacturing network, it becomes possible to look years ahead, anticipating how the platform will evolve, what design tools will be required, where reliability challenges may emerge, and how early-stage markets can be supported as they mature.

4. They have a clear, credible technology vision and they share it

A true partner brings conviction and discipline to its technology vision. At Wolfspeed, we are bold in development but deliberate in how we bring innovations to market. We prioritize demonstrating performance, reliability, and manufacturability before making claims, because trust is built on results, not announcements.

This approach resonates with customers. Consistency, reliability, robustness, and application fit emerge as decisive factors.

A strong technology vision shows up in behaviors:

When partners collaborate beyond the component boundary and at the system level, roadmaps become shared architectures, risk is reduced earlier, and differentiation compounds across product generations.

5. They push technical boundaries while executing relentlessly

Long-term success requires holding two truths at once: executing flawlessly on today’s priorities while investing deliberately in tomorrow’s breakthroughs. The best partners align leadership, R&D, and operations around clear priorities and then execute relentlessly.

They continuously ask:

When priorities are clear, execution follows and innovation compounds.

Powering the future together

At Wolfspeed, we measure ourselves against these five qualities every day. That may explain the consistent feedback we hear from customers: our teams engage deeply, bring uncommon technical depth, and challenge conventional thinking. That challenge is intentional. While we supply scalable, production proven SiC materials and devices, we are working with our partners to architect the future of power electronics. And that future will be built together.