Skorpios at home here, plans to stay

Unique technology unlikely to be easily reproduced elsewhere

Skorpios Technologies is a truly homegrown company with deep roots in New Mexico and its founders say they want to keep it that way.

“I live here, I like it here and I want to keep it here,” said Stephen Krasulick, Skorpios founder, president and CEO. “There’s been a lot of pull for us to go to other places, but we’ve been quite stubborn about it. The company and all its people are here.”

Skorpios outsources the fabrication of its base components to silicon foundries and other facilities in the U.S. and elsewhere, but it plans to do all final assembly and testing of its products at a 50,000-square-foot facility that it’s now setting up in Albuquerque, as well as all research and development operations for new products. It wants its corporate headquarters and all customer-facing operations to sit alongside its assembly facility.

“Our core intellectual property — our secret sauce — is here and we want to keep all that in the U.S. and not outsource it to protect our IP,” Krasulick said. “And we want to be responsive and close to our customers, and provide all the support to them here. We think we can do all that cost-effectively in Albuquerque.”

That’s good news for New Mexico given Skorpios’ potential for long-term, sustainable growth into a premier high-tech company.

Given the multimilliondollar backing it has received from some of the largest firms in the networking and telecommunications industry, plus venture investment, the company could face pressure eventually to be acquired by a bigger industry player. And, if acquired, it would be up to the buyer where they want to set up Skorpios’ headquarters and operations.

But the company’s founders and all the intellectual might that created Skorpios is planted firmly in Albuquerque.

That’s hard to re-establish elsewhere, no matter who tries to acquire the company, said David Blivin, managing partner with Santa Fe-based Cottonwood Technology, one of the original investors in the company.

“Skorpios’ technology is so unique, it’s not something you can just hand off to any acquirer, even in the semiconductor world,” Blivin said. “The core competency can’t just be duplicated elsewhere in a short period of time.”

In addition, some of the largest industry competitors are co-investors in the company and that’s largely because none of them wants to see it land in just one corporation’s hands. That makes it a more likely candidate to eventually go public through an initial public offering.

“To a large extent, it’s better for everybody that Skorpios stay independent, so I think the most likely scenario in the future for the company is that it go public,” Blivin said. “First, they need to build revenue and predictability in the market but, as their customer and revenue base broadens, they’re likely to become a public company and, in that sense, they’re definitely committed to growing here and staying here.”

That’s what Krasulick and his team are hoping for.

“If our future path is an IPO, we stay here,” Krasulick said. “We can’t predict what the path is if someone acquires us — they choose where they want us — but we’re capable of building a large stand-alone company right here. If an acquisition happens, it happens, but our goal is to build something sustainable in New Mexico.”