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In memoriam
Image sensor pioneer Luc De Mey passes away
Reading time: 2 minutes
After a long illness, Luc De Mey died on 8 March at the age of 77. The Antwerpian was a pioneering entrepreneur in the CMOS image sensor industry. Under his leadership, Fillfactory was sold to Cypress for 100 million dollars and CMOSIS was acquired by AMS for 220 million euros.
Luc De Mey’s ventures in CMOS image sensors began in 1998 when he joined Imec’s research group on the topic. A year later, the Leuven institute decided to spin out the successful activity, which at that time already had a dozen customers. Together with ten fellow researchers, De Mey got the opportunity to start Fillfactory.
In its first year of independence, the Mechelen-based company recorded two million euros in revenue. This would grow to 23 million in 2004, at which point Cypress stepped in. “They already had a lot of real estate in mobile phones and they saw that every phone sooner or later would get a camera,” De Mey told Bits&Chips in 2010 (link in Dutch).
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