XMax Inc., a Nasdaq-listed company that sells furniture and has recently moved into AI services, announced on October 9, 2026 that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire all of Hexa Creation Inc., a startup developing high-voltage gallium nitride (GaN) power chips. The share purchase agreement is dated October 5.
According to XMax's Form 8-K filing, the aggregate purchase price is $4,123,711.34 in cash: $4 million to Hexa's founder, Professor Yuji Zhao, for his 97% stake, and $123,711.34 to Skysong Innovations for the remaining 3%. Half is due at closing, with a $500,000 deposit that XMax paid on June 24, 2026 credited against it. The other half is deferred until December 31, 2027 and carries interest. XMax will also pay Skysong a change-of-control fee equal to 5% of the purchase price.
The deal has not closed. It depends on customary conditions, including Hexa's patent licence remaining in force, and either side can walk away if it has not closed by April 5, 2027. Once complete, Hexa will become a wholly owned subsidiary of XMax.
What Hexa Creation is building
Hexa Creation, which also uses the name HexaGaN, is a Delaware corporation developing 1200V vertical GaN power semiconductors. Its roadmap centres on a native 1200V vertical GaN trench MOSFET for high-voltage, high-power uses. Most commercial GaN power products today work at around 650V or below, and XMax said vertical designs are intended to take GaN into higher-voltage territory.
Target markets listed in the announcement include power infrastructure for AI data centres, electric vehicles, energy storage and ultra-fast charging. The company may later move from single devices into power modules and broader power-system products. XMax did not disclose any revenue, product shipments or headcount for Hexa.
Hexa holds an exclusive licence to patents, technical information and materials from Skysong Innovations, the technology transfer organisation of Arizona State University, which is also the 3% shareholder being bought out.
“This acquisition marks XMax's entry into high-voltage power semiconductors, a field closely tied to the growing power demands of AI infrastructure.”
The founder
Zhao is an electrical engineering professor who works on wide-bandgap semiconductors for power electronics. He led a GaN research group at Arizona State University, where one listed project was a 1.2 kV-class GaN vertical power transistor funded by the US Department of Energy's ARPA-E programme, and moved to Rice University in July 2021. He earned his doctorate at UC Santa Barbara under Nobel laureate Shuji Nakamura and received a US Presidential PECASE award in 2019.
Zhao said the deal would give Hexa's 1200V vertical GaN work a path toward commercialisation and allow the team to focus on advancing the technology. No outside venture funding for Hexa has been reported.
Why XMax is buying
XMax was called Nova LifeStyle until November 2025, when it changed its name to reflect a technology focus. It still designs and distributes furniture, and in 2026 it set up two AI subsidiaries, XMax AI Inc. in Nevada and Elonx AI Holdings in Singapore, to sell AI software, model access and GPU services. For the three months to June 30, 2026, total sales were $2.74 million, of which $1.10 million came from API-based AI services, according to Motley Fool's summary of its filings.
Chief executive Andy Lu said the purchase marks XMax's entry into high-voltage power semiconductors, a field he tied to the power demands of AI infrastructure, and that it complements the company's AI business.
XMax pointed to a Yole Group forecast that the GaN power device market will grow from about $355 million in 2024 to about $3 billion in 2030, an annual growth rate of roughly 42%.
A difficult field for startups
Vertical GaN has long been studied as a way to overcome the voltage and current limits of conventional lateral GaN devices, but commercialising it has proved hard. NexGen Power Systems, a US startup that focused on vertical GaN, shut down suddenly, Chinese industry outlet PEdaily reported in January 2024. Hexa will now rely on XMax's balance sheet rather than venture funding to try.
