Diamond Quanta Inc. is establishing a North Bay operations and process development center in Petaluma, where the Mountain View company developing diamond materials for electronics and optics is building its first major pilot manufacturing system and expects its first locally produced parts within months.
The company calls the operation “Diamond Valley,” a deliberate reference to the North Bay’s former “Telecom Valley,” the communications-equipment cluster centered around Petaluma and Santa Rosa that became a major technology manufacturing hub in the 1990s.
“It definitely keeps us connected to Silicon Valley, where our customers and partners are,” founder and CEO Adam Khan said. He said Petaluma offered industrial infrastructure, a skilled labor pool and “the space and room to grow for our future needs,” at costs difficult to find in Silicon Valley…