Navitas Semiconductor stock (NASDAQ: NVTS) fell sharply in pre-market trading on Wednesday after Wolfspeed accused the company of infringing patents across several core power-chip product lines.
The development adds a legal overhang to one of the market’s more volatile AI-linked semiconductor trades.
NVTS was trading around $13.99, down about 8.2%, while some live feeds showed a steeper intraday fall of more than 9%.
The selloff is sharp because Navitas is no longer viewed as just a small power-chip company and investors are pricing it as a potential winner from AI data-centre power upgrades.
Wolfspeed lawsuit hits Navitas’ core growth story
The immediate trigger is legal, as Wolfspeed said it filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Navitas in the US District Court for the District of Delaware on Tuesday.
The wide-bandgap semiconductors manufacturer said that it was taking action to protect its gallium nitride and silicon carbide intellectual property.
The complaint targets a broad range of Navitas products.
Wolfspeed said the allegedly infringing products include Navitas’s GaN-based FETs from the GaNFast, GaNSlim and GaNSafe families, as well as its GeneSiC MOSFETs and SiCPAK modules.
The company also named five US patents in the lawsuit.
Wolfspeed CEO Robert Feurle said the company is “deeply committed” to defending intellectual property built over decades of innovation and research investment.
He added that protecting Wolfspeed’s patent portfolio is a strategic priority for the company and shareholders.
That does not mean Wolfspeed has won anything, but investors now have to price in uncertainty around possible damages, licensing costs, injunction risk and management distraction.
Analysts liked the pivot, but the valuation had already run hard
Before the lawsuit, the bull case was gaining momentum.
Needham analyst N. Quinn Bolton raised his Navitas price target to $21 from $13 and kept a Buy rating after the company’s results and guidance came in ahead of Street expectations.
Bolton linked the improved outlook to Navitas’s pivot toward high-power markets, which is central to the AI data-centre story.
Baird analyst Tristan Gerra also maintained a Buy rating and lifted his target to $20 from $4 in May.
That large target hike reflected growing optimism that Navitas’s GaN and SiC products can play a bigger role in next-generation power systems.
But the valuation had already become harder to ignore.
Navitas had surged after its role in Nvidia’s MGX AI infrastructure initiative drew investor attention, with the stock up about 370% over the previous year and trading at roughly 137 times projected sales for the next 12 months.
When a stock is priced for flawless execution, even a legal overhang can quickly become a valuation event.
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