LVEDC event touts strength of Lehigh Valley tech economy

The Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. led an event Thursday that celebrated the region’s tech economy.  

At its Fall Signature Event, the LVEDC focused on the region’s semiconductor industry, which began in 1951 with the first mass production of transistors at Western Electric in Allentown, and how many industries grew from that.  

The people who worked on that technology back then, were part of the process that has helped develop the technology the world is using today, said Jill Bennett, vice president at Zeon and networking engineering director, Network Edge Group at Intel.  

“Developments like voice switches and T1 transport, which for decades managed nearly every phone call in the country, had their origins right here in the Lehigh Valley,” Bennett said. “Standards and products like USB that we plug into today. were developed here. Conductivity like firewire for Apple computers, Bluetooth, or rechannel, which are state of the art for reading hard disk drives, were invented and designed here. Components in the first iPhone had their origin here. I worked on digital signal processors that went into the first digital cellular phones that were built by Nokia and Motorola. And lastly, the Intel cellular network processors that manage your mobile calls, your texts, your applications, are engineered right here in Allentown.”  

Those experts were responsible for developing the technology that powers the world today, said Jill Bennett, Vice President, Xeon and Networking Engineering Director, Network and Edge Group at Intel.

“It is amazing that so much innovation that surrounds us in our daily lives has been created here in Lehigh Valley,” she said.

Today, the Lehigh Valley’s technology industry features about 30 companies that collectively employ about 1,500 people and produce technology relied upon by brands such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, AWS, AT&T, Verizon, Netflix, and Nokia. 

Semiconductor technology firms operating in the Lehigh Valley include AAYUNA, Broadcom, Cisco, Coherent, Infinera, iDEAL Semiconductor, Intel, and POET Technologies. They are supported by Lehigh Valley firms such as Air Products, Evonik, EMD Electronics, and LBN that supply components and raw materials.

Together, they are creating solutions that allow data and electricity to be transmitted faster, with less heat, in smaller hardware.

And those companies are looking to grow.

“We’re looking at increasing our capacity here, growing more,” said Doug Dopp, Senior Director of Manufacturing at Broadcom and senior leader of its wafer fabrication facility in Upper Macungie Township that employs about 350 people. “Our business is doing very, very well.  

Growth will require expanding the workforce substantially. Nationwide, the semiconductor industry is looking to fill 100,000 jobs, said Wayne Barz, chief investment officer at Ben Franklin Northeast, which operates the TechVentures incubator where many technology firms get their start.

The Lehigh Valley’s technology companies plan to work together to introduce high school students to those careers and build a pipeline of talent, Barz said.  

There have been setbacks.  

In August, the Lehigh Valley applied to the federal government to be designated as a Tech Hub, which could have brought up to $75 million to the region to expand the semiconductor and advanced materials manufacturing industry.

LVEDC submitted the application on behalf of a regional coalition that included tech companies, colleges and universities, state and local governments, and partners in labor, economic development, community services, and workforce development.

The Lehigh Valley’s application was not among the 31 chosen by the U.S. Economic Development Administration in October. But the process was fruitful nonetheless because it brought together the tech industry and its partners. They now are collaborating on shared needs such as building supply chains and developing a future workforce, and three or four companies are planning to expand, LVEDC President and CEO Don Cunningham said.

“The benefits of this coalition are tremendous, but it’s really renewed the focus in the Lehigh Valley on development and opportunities around the sector, better understandings of the ecosystem behind it, the supply chain that links it together, and the partnerships that can be developed,” he said.