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Complete Solaria says it acquired SunPower’s assets for $45 million after its bankruptcy, then sold its shingled module patents to Maxeon, which is now owned by China’s TCL Group.
April 25, 2025
Rachel Metea
From pv magazine USA
US-based SunPower is rising again under the Complete Solaria brand, which will adopt the SunPower name along with the assets it acquired from the bankrupt company in 2024. SunPower also carries another legacy from both companies’ histories: solar veteran T.J. Rodgers, who bankrolled and helped scale both companies in their early years.
Rodgers, who founded Cypress Semiconductor, first became involved with SunPower in 2001 after running into a friend at a coffee shop. Rodgers said his friend told him he was having financial problems with his new company, SunPower. Rodgers said he wrote a personal investment check for $750,000 and joined SunPower’s board. Five years later, he convinced the board of Cypress Semiconductor to buy a 40% stake in SunPower.
SunPower took off shortly after, enabling the company to modify its Texas wafer fabrication plant, for example, to train SunPower engineers on silicon manufacturing, which he said pushed SunPower’s A‑300 SunPower solar cell to come to market in high volume at low cost. Under CEO Tom Werner, who joined SunPower in 2005, SunPower began establishing its legacy. For example, the company set a record in 2014 when it achieved an efficiency of 24.1% for a module using silicon cells.
In 2021, SunPower CEO Tom Werner announced his retirement, ending an 18-year tenure during which he took the company public in 2005, led it past $1 billion in revenue by 2008, navigated the solar boom-and-bust of the early 2010s, and helped it emerge – despite struggles – as one of the largest US residential solar installers by 2019. Then came the pandemic, and with it, home improvements. Solar was thriving.
And then, things fell apart. Interest rates raised costs and NEM 3.0 devastated the leading rooftop market in California. In December 2023, the company defaulted on its debt and issued a “going concern” warning. A series of missteps and business practices that drew criticism began to mount. In August 2024, the company filed for bankruptcy. It was the end of the line for the US solar giant.
Or so we thought.
When Werner learned SunPower was filing for Chapter 11, he called Rodgers. Rodgers began to raise funds for Complete Solar, his new solar company, to buy SunPower’s assets. Rodgers said it was difficult to execute, given that the 65-person “startup” had limited cash flow and time for it to buy and integrate 2,901 employees from his former company.
Rodgers is SunPower’s CEO and once again, chair. Since the asset acquisition, the integrated company has slashed its workforce from nearly 3,000 employees to 900. According to SunPower, it has twice achieved over $300 million in annualized revenue, and turned profitable and cash flow positive.
Bankrolled by Rodgers and John Doerr, Complete Solaria was formed in 2022 through a merger between residential solar supplier Complete Solar and solar module maker Solaria.
Following its bankruptcy, SunPower sold its assets to Complete Solaria for $45 million. Complete Solar later sold the patents for its shingled solar modules to Maxeon, the panel manufacturing spinout of SunPower that is now part of China’s TCL Technology, which announced the launch of its new TCL SunPower Global energy business unit in late March.
The new unit will operate independently from Maxeon.
“Maxeon stays as an independent company listed at Nasdaq, focusing on the residential, commercial and UPP markets in the United States,” a company spokesperson told pv magazine. More details on the future of each of Maxeon’s factories were not disclosed.
TCL SunPower Global will rely on the SunPower installer network, especially in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. “TCL SunPower Global has no ties to US-based SunPower Corporation and is completely independent,” said the spokesperson.
SunPower will present its audited 2024 financial results and unaudited first-quarter 2025 results during its earnings call on April 30.
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